


The World Entire

by BrennanSpeaks



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Protective Joel (The Last of Us)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 40,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25572172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrennanSpeaks/pseuds/BrennanSpeaks
Summary: The Fireflies promise they're not going to hurt Ellie.  They just need to take some blood.  And some tissue samples.  Run some tests.  Investigate some treatment modalities.  Ellie swears she can handle it.It's getting harder and harder for Joel to watch.
Comments: 187
Kudos: 221





	1. Clean

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU set at the end of the first game that investigates what might have happened if the Fireflies hadn't jumped to the decision they made. It includes characters and themes from the second game. Like the games, this tries to paint the characters with some ambiguity and doesn't attempt to cast a "good guy" and a "bad guy." 
> 
> Warnings for medical squick.

The Fireflies moved Ellie into what they call a "clean room." Incidentally, it's on the top floor of the hospital, back corner with only one way in and out. There's two guards at the door at all times and the airlock-style hatch requires keypad authorization. All just for her protection, Joel's sure. Marlene uses one hand to shield the keypad as she types in the combination before waving him in. Joel's pretty sure it's a six digit code. Not that it matters.

The room beyond is spare and aseptically white, with wide windows into the hallway giving it the feeling of a fishbowl. It's spotlessly clean, though the rest of the hospital shows its age with peeling paint and creeping mold. The light in here is fluorescent, rather than halogen work lamps. The EKG and pulse ox glow blue and beep softly. Alone in the reclineable bed, Ellie looks very small. The blue hospital gown hangs off her like a tent. The white sheets threaten to drown her. Marlene gives Joel a nod that's probably meant to be reassuring. "She's stable. She's been in and out, but she was talking an hour ago."

Joel approaches the bed and lays a hand on her hair. It's cleaner than it's been since he met her. Every inch of her was scrubbed before being moved to this room. Her eyes flutter open when he rubs his thumb over her forehead. "Hey, baby girl."

She blinks a few times and almost leans into his hand before remembering herself. "We did it," her voice is faint, "We made it to the Fireflies."

" _You_ made it. Just had me along for the ride. I think I slowed you down, mostly."

She smiles a little at that. "Shut up." She tries to sit up, but he catches her shoulders.

"Now, take it easy. You've been through a lot. Just gotta take some time now to heal. Get your strength back."

"I don't wanna _heal._ I'm not sick. I want to get going on this cure shit." She doesn't try to sit up again, but her eyes are bright and they hone in on Marlene. "The scientists, are they here?"

Marlene's lip is twitching as if she's trying not to smile. She steps to Ellie's other side. "The doctor will be in to speak with you soon. Try to rest until then." She puts a hand on Ellie's arm, just below her elbow and the IV. "I'm proud of you."

To Joel, the touch doesn't look maternal. Or even like the approval of a commanding officer. Yes, she looks proud, but like you might be of a trophy. Or a Purple Heart. He clears his throat. "You heard the boss-lady, Ellie. Get some sleep. We got plenty of time to talk after your doctor's appointment."

She nods, her eyelids already fluttering, still smiling. "I can't believe we fucking did it . . ."

Joel squeezes her hand, nods to Marlene, and turns to go. He has to step aside so that the woman can enter another code - eight digits this time - to open the door from the inside. Joel doesn't comment on that - what would be the point? He nods to the two boys with machine guns and falls in beside Marlene as she strides down the hallway.

"We'll get you your guns," she says briskly, "The original shipment was lost when we had to flee Boston, so it'll take a little time. Maybe a week. But, I can get you double what we promised. God knows you've earned every penny."

Joel studies her with covert looks. "I'm not worried about that right now. When do I get to meet this doctor?"

She greets that comment with the caution of a boxer stepping back from an opening feint. "I'll arrange an introduction. He's very busy. And very important to the cause."

Joel merely grunts.

Her face hardens a little. "I wish you hadn't said that to her."

"Said what?"

"About having plenty of time. You shouldn't encourage her to get attached."

"It's a little fucking late for that, don't you think?"

She looks away. "Yeah." Neither of them reacts to the clear implication in her words. They have a week to get him his guns, so he doesn't have to have this fight yet. A week, and maybe they'll have what they need from Ellie and they can be done with all this. Marlene pulls a metal token like a fishing lure out of her pocket. "Take this to the second floor and ask for Hernandez. She'll set you up with a bunk. Private room, full access to the mess down the hall. And Joel?"

"Yeah?"

Her face is composed but her eyes are shining with emotion. "You did good out there. _Real_ good. This could be what changes everything."

Joel grunts. "Yeah. I'll believe that when I see it."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

It's three days before they let him see Ellie again. This time, when he arrives, she's sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in real clothes - or, at least, a Firefly-issue tank and pants. A middle-aged man with sandy hair sits before her, wearing a black, visor-like contraption which he seems to be using to examine her eyes. She's fidgeting, but he grips her chin with two fingers, holding her still. "Ellie, could you please take this seriously for one minute?"

Joel lets the door swing closed behind him and clears his throat to announce himself. "Frankly, doc, it's a little hard to take you serious in that hat."

Ellie tugs away from the doctor and her face breaks into a grin. Pushing past the other man, she all but bounces over to Joel. "Dude! I was starting to think you forgot where I lived."

Joel forces a smile. "Sorry. Brought you something to make up for it." He reaches into his pack and pulls out her stack of well-worn comics. "And . . ." With a flourish, he pulls out the next issue and thunks it on top.

Her face lights up even further. "No way! Where the fuck did you find it?"

"Won it in a poker game. The kids around here can't bluff for shit."

"This is practically new . . ."

"Uh, she can't have that in here!" The doctor's voice is a little strained.

Joel raises his head and arches an eyebrow. "They're _hers,"_ he says coldly.

The man flushes but holds his ground. "This is a controlled environment. She can't have anything in here that hasn't been sterilized first."

" _You're_ not sterilized. I'm not either."

"And neither of us will be staying longer than an hour."

"Now, don't you . . ."

"Joel, it's not a big deal," Ellie cuts him off quickly, "They've got this sterilizer thingy . . . what's it called?"

"An autoclave," the doctor supplies.

"Autoclave. Just give these to Mia - she's one of the nurses - and she can sterilize it in a couple of hours."

Joel pauses just long enough that his disapproval can't be missed, then nods. "Alright, then." He turns to the doctor and extends his hand. "You must be Jerry."

The man's face twists a little, but his grip is firm enough. "Dr. Anderson."

"Joel." He slings his pack back over his shoulder. "Sorry for interrupting your exam."

"That's fine, we were just about done anyway. Just need to finish the sonographic assessment. If you could lie down, Ellie, this'll only take a minute."

Joel's brow furrows. "The what?" Ellie seems to know the drill, though. She lies down on the bed and pulls her tank top halfway up to expose her belly. Anderson is sitting on the rolling stool again and pulling over an ultrasound machine, like the ones that used to grace gynecologists' offices. Only, instead of putting the gel-slicked probe on her lower abdomen, he tucks it up just under her ribs and presses down with enough force to make her wince.

"So," Ellie says, her voice light despite the tension in her brow, "Is it . . . a girl?"

The doctor snorts. "Very funny."

"A boy? I could deal with a boy. They're kind of gross, though."

Joel resists the urge to roll his eyes. "Seriously, doc, what _are_ you doing?"

"Nothing to worry about. Just checking for any residual bleeding."

"Bleeding? Why the hell would she be bleeding?

Anderson doesn't respond at first. His eyes are locked on the grainy black and white screen and he seems lost in concentration. Joel growls and grabs his wrist, stilling it instantly. "Why would she be bleeding?"

" _Joel!_ "

"It's okay, Ellie," Anderson says quickly, "I should've explained. She had hepatic and splenic aspirates taken yesterday. I need to make sure the needle didn't cause a minor intraperitoneal hemorrhage."

Some of those words might as well be Chinese to Joel, and he has a nagging suspicion that Anderson knows that. His face hardens. "Isn't that a little invasive?"

"It's very safe."

"I thought you were studying her blood."

"We are and there's a lot we can learn from her serum titers and leukogram characteristics. But, we need to look for insight wherever we can find it, and that includes investigating any extravascular sources of immune response."

"And you decide you can just investigate those extravascular sources without even gettin' permission?"

"C'mon, Joel, leave it alone!"

Anderson's face is very cold. "I got authorization. From Marlene. Her guardian." He pauses with the probe on the left side of her abdomen. "But that, Ellie, is neither here nor there because we are done and you . . . are perfect. No bleeding. Barely a bruise."

Joel belatedly notices the thumbnail-sized purple splotch a fist's length below her breastbone. It's fresher than the many bumps and bruises she picked up on the road. Fresher and a more even, perfect round. Before Joel can investigate it further, Ellie is tugging her shirt down and grimacing. "I hate that gel stuff."

"Put a note in my complaint box. Did you take your pain medication last night?"

"I hate that too. It makes me all woozy."

"Well, you don't have to take it tonight if you don't want to. I'll see you tomorrow for your exam. Make sure you get enough sleep."

"Aye aye, Cap."

Anderson pauses, looking at Joel. "Remember: one hour. Any longer and we'll have to decontaminate the whole suite."

"Relax, doc, I'm not gonna mess up your science experiment."

As he leaves, Ellie swings her legs down from the bed. "You sure know how to make a great first impression."

Joel grunts. "I don't need to best friends with him - just need him to do right by you." He glances at her and can't help but smile. "Besides, didn't you try and stab me the first time we met?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time." She stands and paces over to the windows. Past the hallway outside, they can see sunlight streaming through the dirty windows, and the far side of the hospital building beyond. "What's going on out there, anyway?"

Joel pads after her. "Hard to say, they're doing a pretty good job of keeping me in the dark." He drops a hand to her shoulder. "Everyone's real excited about you, though."

She grins and blushes as if he's just paid her the best compliment ever. "It's so weird to think that we're actually here. That after everything, this is actually happening."

"Yeah," Joel sighs, "Weird. Ellie . . ." he turns her to him, "Anderson. He been treating you okay?"

She seems genuinely puzzled. "Yeah. It's fine."

"That aspirate thing . . ."

"Yeah, that was a biiiig needle." She curls an arm subconsciously around her abdomen, but her face remains nonchalant. "But it was no big deal. They gave me something first, so I didn't feel it. Or, I _felt_ it, but I . . . sort of didn't care?"

"Ellie, they should not just be doing those kinds of things without talking about it first."

"They told me what they were doing. Sort of, at least. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but that might've been from the drugs . . ."

"Ellie!"

"Kidding. God, Joel, your face . . ." She trails off, then gives up on the weak attempt at a joke. Her face goes very solemn. "Y'know, there's gonna be a lot more of this kind of thing. Tests. Procedures. If Cordyceps was simple, they'd have figured it out twenty years ago."

"Did Anderson tell you that?"

"Joel, c'mon, the point is, I can handle it! I can do this." She stares up at him, a tiny adult with bare feet and a question in her eyes. "Can you?"

He sighs. "You don't have to worry about me."

"Good, 'cause I don't want to. I'm doing what I have to do, okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay. That's out of the way." She walks back to the bed and plops down on it, suddenly just a teenage girl again. "Now. You've gotta tell me _everything_ about this Firefly compound."

_tbc_


	2. Guardians

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie makes a friend. Joel picks a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for a brief PTSD flashback.

Fireflies - or, their rank and file, at least - mostly avoid Joel. Technically, he's an honored guest. He gets free range of the first and second floors of the hospital, with their bunk rooms, common areas, mess hall, and improvised weight room. He hardly uses any of it, save for that one night after he met Anderson when he corners a heavy bag in the gym and works it over until his hands were raw and bleeding.

The mess hall isn't quite as easily avoided as the weight room, but, fortunately, the repurposed hospital cafeteria comes with plenty of tiny tables where one or two people can sit alone and contemplate their place in an unfeeling universe. When he has to eat, Joel keeps his head down toward his tray and wears a forbidding scowl, and that's mostly enough to keep the curious at bay.

Which is why it's such a surprise when, halfway through breakfast and two days since he last saw Ellie, a girl clangs her tray onto his table and drags up a chair. He looks up with an arched eyebrow, for the moment too startled to even try to look scary. She's a beanpole of a girl, with a square jaw and broad, blocky shoulders that suggest she might be powerful if she ever grows into that frame. For now, her lanky arms swing freely and tuck around her tray with the awkward grace of a half-grown foal. Her eyes are bright and curious.

"You're him. The smuggler."

He grunts. "And what are you? FEDRA customs?"

She flushes a bright red. "Sorry."

He snorts despite himself. "Don't be, girl. I'm just teasing." He studies her for a moment. She's younger than her height would suggest. Sixteen, at a stretch. Maybe younger. "The Fireflies recruiting from junior high, now?"

"What's junior high?"

He resists the odd urge to roll his eyes. "Trust me, you're better off not knowing." He shovels another bite of oatmeal into his mouth because he's here for one reason, and one reason only. "What're you doing here, girl?"

She's still a little pink around the ears, but she stuffs a bit of toast in her mouth and chews with an air of defiance. "Eating."

He gives her a look that strives for "withering," but probably lands closer to "patronizing." Her flush deepens, but she leans forward as if to share a secret.

"They say you came all the way from Boston. What was that like?"

"Cold," he says shortly.

She's undeterred, and for a moment, it's impossible not to compare the lively spark in her eyes to a certain other young girl Joel knows. "Is it true what they say? About the girl? They're saying she might be the cure."

"I wouldn't know anything about that. You'd have to take that up with this Anderson fellow."

She scowls down at her plate. "Yeah, I've tried." Her animus doesn't last long. After barely a second, she's looking back up at him, her eyes shining. "But, what's she _like_?"

"I'm not gonna talk about Ellie," Joel says firmly, "Not sure it's any of your business."

"Ellie," the girl echoes, "That's her name?"

Joel's hand tightens on his spoon. He swallows and narrows his eyes. "You people are already setting her up as some kind of messiah . . . and you don't even know her _name_?"

Her long-fingered hands freeze and her mouth falls open as if she almost knew what to say but stopped herself just in time. From off to the side, a young man's barking voice spares her from answering. "Hey! Private Anderson! You're late for PT. Might want to make an appearance if it's not too much _trouble._ "

She stuffs the rest of her toast in her mouth in one bite. "Yeah, Matthias," she calls back, "Be right there."

She pushes to her feet, but pauses when Joel snorts softly. " _Anderson,_ huh?"

She seems to realize all at once that she's been rude. She wipes a jam-smudged hand on her pant leg, then offers it for Joel to shake. "Abby."

He shakes her hand and finds her grip sticky, but firmer than he'd expected. He can't help but smile a little. "Joel."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Climbing the stairs to Ellie's floor the next morning, Joel is taken aback at the sound of laughter. Specifically, the distinctive laughter of teenage girls. Plural. He strides down the hallway, nodding to the two guards and finds something more akin to a slumber party than a research project at the end of it. Ellie is sitting, cross-legged, by the floor-to-ceiling window and holding her newest comic plastered flat against the glass. On the other side, squatting on her heels and leaning close to read, is a grinning Abby Anderson.

"C'mon, you've gotta admit, that's cool," Ellie is saying.

"I'm pretty sure faster-than-light travel doesn't work like that," Abby says through a smile.

"Oh, come on, like you're an expert on the space-time continuum!"

"I dunno, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve that much glowy light."

"Well, excuse them for making it visually interesting!"

"I'm just saying, if you like stories about space, I can hook you up. Asimov. Frank Herbert. Ursula Le Guin. The classics."

"Maybe once I'm desperate. Check back with me in like a week."

Joel clears his throat. "Good to see you two gettin' along."

Abby springs to her feet, her face flushing as if she's been caught committing a crime. "Sorry, Mr. Miller."

"What for?"

She ducks her head. "I should go."

"Hey," Ellie calls after her, "Bring those snobby books next time! I wanna tell you how wrong you are!"

Abby waves a hand in acknowledgement but doesn't turn. Joel waits patiently while the guards enter the access code and wave him into the clean room. "I see you're making new friends," he says as he steps into the room.

Ellie shrugs without getting up. "She's Dr. Anderson's daughter."

"Yeah, I figured. She's a friendly sort."

In the midst of pushing herself to her feet, Ellie pauses and winces. Joel is at her side in a moment. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she pants, hauling herself up. Unfortunately for her ruse, her tank hikes up slightly, revealing the bandage over her left hip.

Joel steadies her and lays a hand gently on her waist, just above the white adhesive. "What's this?"

She grunts and quirks a rueful smile After a moment, she pulls the shirt slightly up, revealing white adhesive with a red stain at the center. "Bone marrow biopsy." Before she can shrug away, Joel catches her right hand and turns it over, revealing a small but angry wound closed with a couple of dark blue sutures on her forearm, right at the edge of the bite scar. "Okay. And a skin biopsy. It's not a big deal."

"Ellie, we _talked_ about this."

"And, I told you, I've got it under control! These are _minor_ procedures. Stop flipping out."

"They're taking _bits_ of you!"

"Well, I've got plenty to spare! It's not like I'm running out of blood any time soon!"

Any response dies in his throat. He's hit, for what feels like the millionth time, with the decades-old memory of hot blood spilling between his fingers, with the sound of a girl's pained cry. First time he'd ever seen that much blood. He hadn't known a person could hold so much, especially not one so small . . .

The irritation slips from Ellie's face as she sees . . . whatever it is that's flashing against his. Her shoulders slump. "I'm sorry. I . . . I didn't mean to yell, okay?"

Joel nods sharply. To give himself a break from looking at her, he steps to the other side of the bed and examines a half dozen sheets of paper tacked to the wall. They turn out to be pencil sketches, all done on plain white printer paper. There's a few little doodles and what he assumes are practice runs - sketchy affairs crossed with lines to get the proportions right. There are some finished works too, though. A sparrow with its feathers intricately shaded. A pinto horse like the one she'd stolen from Tommy. A vista of crumbling skyscrapers, vaguely reminiscent of Boston. Joel pauses before the last sketch - a giraffe reaching for a leafy branch with outstretched lips.

"These are real good."

She comes up beside him, smiling tentatively. "That's quite the tone of surprise."

"I . . . no, I just mean . . . I didn't know you drew."

"Not a lot of time for it on the road. What with the trying-to-not-die and all." She runs a thumb over the lower edge of the nearest sketch. "I had this teacher back in Boston. Most of them were shit . . . well, all of them were shit at teaching the curriculum, but there was this one who liked to draw. She taught, like, history or something, but if you were passing her class, she'd let you stay after and she'd teach you some art stuff."

"So, I guess you were pretty good at history."

"Got decent at it, yeah. Never had, like, paints or colored pencils or anything, but you use what you can get."

Joel thinks of those giant boxes of crayons they used to have. Sixty-four colors to a box, with names like "Banana Mania" and "Jazzberry Jam." Always breaking. Always spilling all over the floor. Getting lost in the back of his truck and he'd find them months later, melted and congealed into hard wax puddles. God, he used to hate that. "I'll try and get you some," he tells Ellie, "Art supplies, I mean. Gotta be some still around."

She pauses a moment. "That'd be cool," she says, still in that cautious tone, like she's not sure if he's okay, "God knows I need _something_ to do in here. I'm climbing the walls. Abby thinks I should read _Great Expectations._ "

He winces at the less-painful memory of his own school days. "Do yourself a favor. Don't."

She laughs and it sounds almost natural. "That bad, huh?" She hesitates, then pulls the giraffe picture off the wall. "Here, you should keep this one. Don't look at me like that! I messed up the legs. I want to try again."

He takes the paper and gently folds it, without creasing it. "That's . . . thanks. I mean . . . thank you."

"Any time. Plenty more where that one came from." She sprawls on the bed again, flipping open the comic she'd been showing Abby. "Now. Let's talk about this cliffhanger."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

When Marlene summons Joel to her office, he knows the time for stalling is over. He's gonna have to have this fight. He intentionally leaves his gear and his jacket in his quarters. He arrives casually dressed in just his jeans and a dark tee-shirt. Sneakers, even. Not boots.

They've set her up in a converted exam room, the table pushed aside to make room for a desk. She waves him in with a sort of weary triumph on her face.

"I got your guns," she says without preamble, "It wasn't easy, but what we scrounged together beats the hell out of what Robert owed you. Nine millimeters, forty cals, even a couple of AKs thrown in."

Joel folds his arms and leans against a dusty cabinet. "Thanks. I don't want 'em."

She stares at him for a moment, trying to look surprised. "Do you know what I had to promise to get these guns? And you _don't want 'em._ "

He keeps his face very even. "What the hell would I do with a crate full of AK-47s out here? All my contacts were back in Boston, an' I've got no way of transporting that much cargo."

"Survivor like you? Something tells me you could find something to do with them."

"Maybe." He shrugs. "But, I'm not leaving Salt Lake City. And as far as I can tell, you Fireflies are the only gang in town not sprouting fungus. Ain't like I can sell 'em back to you."

Her lips press tight together. She was expecting this fight, too. "That wasn't the deal, Joel."

"No, the _deal_ was me and Tess escorting a girl a couple miles outside the QZ. Maybe six hours there and back. The deal didn't involve Tess bleeding out in the Capitol lobby, and it sure as hell didn't involve the shit we've gone through in the eight months since. I think it's time for a new fucking deal."

She swallows. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

He only grunts.

She presses her hands to the dented metal of her desk and drops her head. Sighs. "What do you want, Joel?"

He clenches his jaw. "Ellie needs someone to watch out for her. And it looks like the position is open." She picks up her head and glares, but he cuts her off. "That's my price. You make me Ellie's guardian. I want to see her every day, not just when you feel like throwing me a bone. And you tell Anderson that if he wants to poke her full of holes, he comes to _me_ first. He explains himself and gets _my_ permission."

"Come on, Joel . . ."

"No. You know Ellie. You know she'll do just about any damn thing you tell her to if it's for this cure business. And I am _not_ lettin' her break herself just so y'all can feel like you're _looking for the light_."

"Do you even give a shit about what we're trying to do here?"

"Do you even give a shit about that little girl?"

"I can't . . . even if I wanted to give you that kind of control, I can't. _I_ don't even have that kind of power."

That's not what Joel wanted to hear. He draws a slow breath. "Anderson said . . ."

"Anderson commands this facility! I mean, he doesn't do the logistics or the administrative shit, but he's head honcho, top of the food chain! It's all a courtesy. He tells me which tests he wants to run. He _asks_ me for consent, since I knew Ellie's mom." Joel can hear the air quotes in her voice. "He's the last one who can make a cure, and this is the best shot we've had in two decades. If there's a test he wants run and I say no, he _will_ cut me out."

"And you're just okay with this?"

"Yes, because Anderson is not the fucking bad guy here! Why can't you get that through your head?" She pauses, not looking at him. Her voice softens. "Look, I get it. I had to survive out there for a while. Before I found the Fireflies. It gets to where you can barely see past your own nose. Only thing on your mind is the next day, the next meal, the next fight. You rely on the person next to you so much they become your whole world. But, you are not out there anymore. In here, we're trying to build something."

"Aw, spare me the recruitment bullshit! I'm not Tommy."

"Then let's talk a language you understand." Her voice hardens. "Let's make a deal. I can give you the visitation. God knows she needs something to take her mind off things. And I can _loop you in_ on the research plans. I'm pretty sure I can get Dr. Anderson to explain most of it to you. But, I can't give you decision making power. It's not going to fucking happen."

Joel forces himself to breathe slowly through his nose. He knows this is about the best he's gonna get. "I want to be there. For every procedure. He wants to take a fucking cheek swab, I'll be standing there with a glass of water and a goddamn lollypop."

"I'll talk to him about it. I'm sure we can work something out within reason." She straightens. "But, we're gonna need something from you."

"And what might that be?"

"Loyalty."

He has a feeling he's not going to like what that entails. He's right.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews and concrit are much appreciated.


	3. Hear Hoof Beats, Think Horses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel joins the Fireflies. It does nothing to improve his mood.

Joel's boots thud an even rhythm as he crosses the hospital lobby. He shifts his rifle on his shoulder and checks the straps of the extra-large pack he's been issued. His finger brushes the light metal chain around his neck and his face darkens a little. The pendant - the one emblazoned with "Joel Miller" on one side and the Firefly logo on the other - sits between his tee shirt and his flannel, but it's not as if he can forget that it's there. The black armband bearing the same logo sits over his leather jacket. They at least hadn't tried to force him into some kind of uniform.

Technically, he's a private now. The Fireflies' operating structure is . . . paramilitary at best. He answers to a Sergeant Ulrich who answers to a Lieutenant who answers to a Colonel who, presumably, answers to Anderson. There's no distinction between commissioned and noncommissioned officers. It feels more like a ranking system cobbled together from the titles most recognized in military sci-fi novels. There _is_ some structure to it, though. He has his primary duties, watch and patrol shifts, and a bit of simple grunt work like scrubbing floors and washing dishes - enough to keep him busy, which he suspects is half the point. They'd tried to make him do standardized PT, but he'd declared in no uncertain terms that he would not be running laps and cranking out pushups with a bunch of kids for no reason. Ulrich had wavered and eventually let him "test out" of the physical training with one sweaty, embarrassing afternoon in the gym.

Getting this particular work assignment, though, had taken no struggle at all. Like any faction trying to get by out here, the Fireflies rely heavily on scavenging for everything from computer parts and lab equipment to food and spare clothes. As an outsider with plenty of experience on the road, Joel's ability to get quickly and efficiently in and out of the different scavenging hubs is valuable to them. It's as close to an honest living as any, he supposes.

It's getting warm out, but not so warm that Joel wants to ditch the protection of his coat. The Fireflies' QZ is tiny - just the hospital itself and three more blocks adjoining it, all ringed with piled sandbags and razor wire. The Firefly manning the gate looks about twenty. He keeps watch from a perch like an old lifeguard's chair. "It's Miller, right?"

"Yeah," Joel growls.

"Going out alone?"

"Yeah. Nate Ulrich authorized it. Shift password is 'red delta bravo.'"

The kid pushes a button and the cobbled-together hunk of sheet metal rolls to the side with a groan. "Be safe out there."

"Yeah."

The Fireflies don't normally send scavengers out alone, but this part was almost suspiciously easy for Joel to talk Marlene into. He suspects her life would get a lot simpler were he to get nipped by a clicker out here. Still, he actually feels better once he's a few blocks out from the hospital. There's plenty of infected about, but they mostly keep to the buildings. One runner gets curious about a half a mile out, but he's able to redirect it to the sound of a tossed bottle, slip in behind it, and drop it quick and quiet with a blade to the larynx. Infected have always been easier to deal with than people.

He's moving east along wide avenues, making for the University of Utah. He's got orders to fill up on whatever general supplies he can get but to focus on specific ingredients from the biology labs - stuff Anderson needs for fungal cultures. They wrote down the names of the chemicals. Each is about twenty-five letters long and doesn't follow any of the conventions of English that he's familiar with.

All in all, it's a pretty pleasant hike, and he's feeling okay as he passes the red brick columns of the stadium where the Utes used to play. There's plenty of greenery here, but it's mostly little scrub trees and hardy grasses - nothing too taxing to tramp through. He has to be more careful, of course, once he's in the biology building. It's a four-story glass-and-steel affair with two basement sublevels carrying the faint whiff of old spores. The infected here are mostly clickers - no bloaters, fortunately. He's not looking for a fight, and he's able to sneak around them without too much difficulty. Previous Firefly scavengers have cleared the upper three levels and dynamited the stairs. Once Joel gets to the ladder Ulrich told him about, he's home free and can take his time poking through labs and stock rooms on the empty upper levels. Though his eyes are just about permanently crossed from squinting at faded labels, he's able to track down fifteen of the eighteen chemicals on Anderson's list, and it eventually becomes clear that the rest are nowhere to be found.

Once he has the important shit, he risks a bit of noise to crack open a couple of vending machines. They've still got plenty of water, and soda, and Powerade. He loads as much as he can into his pack and stacks the rest, for easy pickup the next time they need something from here.

It doesn't make sense to try to skirt past clickers with forty pounds worth of water on his back, so Joel sets up a small detonator on an extra-long fuse to draw the infected to the south side of the building. As soon as it goes off, he shimmies out a window on the second story, north side, and uses a rope to lower first his pack then himself to the ground. He's got what he came here for - officially, at least. But, he's not quite done.

He keeps heading east, sweating, now, from the late morning sun and the weight of the pack. Up ahead, a squat brick building bears a faded red U and the words "CAMPUS ST RE." He pauses at the door and listens, picking up a handful of echoing moans. Runners, but . . . only a couple of them. The store is built on a slab - there's no basement, so it's not a great breeding ground for spores. There's not much reason for the infected to stick around. He eases his pack to the ground, checks his holsters, and swings the lead pipe down from his shoulder.

Joel enters through the Starbucks and drops immediately into a crouch, alert for runners or stalkers. All is still. He creeps around the tables, pauses to grab a bag of beans from behind the counter, and slips out into the main bookstore. The space is cavernous and echoing and garishly red. He drops into cover behind a display of stacked Utes hoodies and takes a moment to mark the infected. Three runners, all scattered across the open space. They're standing hunched and moaning, the way they do when they're weak and there's no prey nearby. He doesn't think these three would last much longer, anyhow.

He moves as silently as he can, slipping through clothes racks and finding concealment behind giant bins of foam footballs. The first runner goes down easy with a shiv in its throat, but on the second he misses the windpipe and it's able to get off a gargling scream. The last runner screams in response and charges him from the opposite end of the store. Joel stands his ground, pipe held down and off to the side in a light grip. When the thing is three feet away, he swings with the confidence of muscle memory. The spikes on the pipe catch the runner in the temple, dropping it instantly. In its wake, he rolls his shoulder to loosen it. Damn, but he's getting too old for this.

The impact he never saw coming suddenly catches him against his side and knocks him to the floor. He grunts in surprise and alarm as the pipe clatters out of his hand. Instinct makes him jerk away and saves his life for the umpteen-thousandth time as a pair of gnashing teeth close on the leather of his upper sleeve rather than his neck. He spits a curse and swings a fist into the infected, his knuckles glancing off gray, horn-like knobs. The stalker hisses and claws at him, but he's able to get a leg between them and stomps out at its ribs once, twice, three times, and then he's free to scramble backwards, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. He grabs the pipe and whips it across his body. The first swing narrowly misses, but the second catches the infected in the neck, releasing a torrent of blood. The stalker dies like it lived - mostly silent.

Joel springs into a crouch, pulls out his pistol, and clears the room. Pauses. Sweeps his gun across the space a second time, watching and listening for any skittering bodies. There's nothing. He stands, panting, and jerks the pipe out of the thing's neck, leaving blades embedded in its spine. He really is getting _much_ too old for this.

He keeps his gun in his hand, just in case, as he clears aisle after aisle, searching for what he came here for. Finally, he rounds a corner and finds a little nook, tucked back between the photo albums and the display of bibs and onsies. 

_Art Supplies._

He smiles and selects a thick spiral notebook of drawing paper and a pad of thin tracing paper. There's a decent set of 36 colored pencils that just barely fits into his pocket. He grabs a couple of paints, too, though he's not sure how they'll stand up to that autoclave thing. He heads back out through the Starbucks, fighting the crazy urge to whistle.

Outside, the coffee beans, paper, and paints just barely fit into his pack. The pencils will have to stay in his pocket. He's heaved the pack back onto his shoulders and is glancing at the sun, wondering if he can make it back to the hospital before the mess hall closes for lunch when a scream reaches his ears, high and piercing and undeniably human. He spins, rifle coming up automatically to his shoulder. 

There's two of them, about two hundred yards away and stumbling out of the brushy trees. A man and a gangly girl, both armed with pistols, both running as if their lives depend on it, which, of course, they do. There's a pack about twelve strong running behind them - mostly runners, a few clickers. They're drawn easily by the girl's terrified screams and the wild shots the man keeps throwing over his shoulder.

Joel sites down the rifle and chambers a round. BANG and a clicker drops, twitching. Chambers another. BANG. BANG. Two runners drop before he has to pause to reload. He's thinned the herd a little, but there's no winning that game. The sound of his rifle is already summoning more infected from the eaves of the buildings. His next shot drops a runner not from the pursuing pack, but from a nearby courtyard halfway between them, where it would have cut them off. "Over here!" Joel bellows, "Don't stop!" The stragglers turn and race in his direction. As he shoots another clicker, his scope flashes across their faces and he realizes these aren't stragglers at all. His face tightens in anger, but there's no time to ask questions now.

He shoots them a path as efficiently as he can, but he's out of rifle rounds before the pair make it within 20 yards. He switches to his 9mm and steps aside, so they can clearly see the dark entrance to the bookstore. They're gonna make it.

They almost make it. Just ten yards away, the girl's coltish legs catch on the gravel slope and she goes down, hard. The man screams and turns back and Joel doesn't bother to tell him to keep going. The pursuing pack is still a few seconds behind, but before she can clamber back to her feet, a runner catches her from her right, knocking her down again. She kicks and struggles as it snaps at her. The man has the perfect angle on it, but he doesn't shoot - probably afraid he'll hit her.

Joel fires once and the runner's temple explodes. The other man grabs her and hauls her up and they're both stumbling towards him again. "Get in!" Joel barks. He waves them into the coffee shop and deadbolts the door, but glass won't hold the infected forever. "Keep going!" He herds them into the main bookstore - the door here is thick, anti-shoplifting steel. He slams it behind them and shoves the lead pipe through the handle to jam it.

In the sudden silence, their panting echoes. The light is dim, but not so dim that Joel needs a flashlight to inspect them. They're both soaked in sweat, from their boots to their sandy hair. Abby's locks have escaped their tight braid and are plastered to her forehead and neck. Jerry's hair stands up in clumps over his tomato-red face.

"What the _hell_ are you two doing here?"

They don't respond at first. Abby is bent over, hands on her knees. She rolls her shoulders, and suddenly freezes. "My . . . my shoulder, oh god, I'm bleeding!" Her voice is winded and hoarse, but tight with panic.

Dr. Anderson stands bolt upright and color rapidly drains from his face, leaving it splotchy. "Oh god . . ." he gasps, "Oh god . . ."

In this particular moment, he's not a doctor. Joel shoulders past him and takes the girl firmly by the arm. "Let me see. Girl, let me look."

Abby has tears leaking down her cheeks and her face is clenched like she's expecting a bullet to the brain at any moment, but she lets Joel tug her loose shirt down past her shoulder blade and wipe away a few smears of blood with a tee shirt. He clicks on his flashlight to be safe and takes a good look.

"No bites," he says after a moment, "It's just road rash. You got it when you fell. Wear a jacket next time."

Abby's breath punches out of her all at once, and her father sags. Joel steps out of the way so they can wrap each other in a tight hug. He gives them a minute, then clears his throat. "Now," he says, "Do you mind telling me _what in the hell_ you're doing here?"

Jerry is still panting, but relief makes him giddy. He huffs out a laugh. "Zebra watching."

Joel blinks, sure he heard him wrong. "Zebra watching."

"It's nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to . . . nothing to _fucking worry about_? If I hadn't of been here, you'd be dead, doc. You. You _do_ know what that would've meant, don't you?"

"Well, what are _you_ doing here, anyway?"

"What am I . . . ?" He slings his pack down, making the water bottles thud and slosh. "My job. I'm out here doing my fucking job and risking my life to get you the pieces for your little science experiment. Y'know, the one you're supposed to be setting up to make a vaccine, save the goddamn world, and get Ellie out of that prison cell. And I find you out here gettin' chased by clickers with your girl because you were out sightseeing like a goddamn tourist in Central Park. And for what? Because you wanted to _see the zebras_?"

Anderson's face is tightening with anger, but Abby speaks before he can. "Show him, Dad."

"Abby . . ."

"Just show him."

Anderson sighs and rips open the small pack on his back. After fishing for a moment, he comes up with a thick manila envelope and tosses it to Joel. Joel upends it and a stack of Polaroids tip into his hand. He squints at them. They're inexpertly taken, but still striking. A zebra foal trots beside its mother in one. In another, a group of monkeys cluster close to the camera, pointing and hooting. Another shows the gray bulk of an elephant emerging from behind a small tree. "So, you took pictures," he growls, "Like any fucking tourist."

Now, even Abby is getting angry. "We took pictures _for Ellie_ ," she all but spits, "You know how cooped up she's been feeling. And she told me about the giraffes, and I figured . . . shit, it doesn't matter, we just wanted to give her something to brighten up her room. And Dad had the morning off while we wait to set up the cultures, so we went outside the perimeter. Nobody was supposed to get hurt."

Something twists in Joel's gut. He glances down the aisle, at where the dead infected still lie in a heap. Then touches his pocket to make sure that the colored pencils are still there.

Jerry runs both hands through his hair. He strives for a diplomatic tone. "Look, Joel . . . I know you think I don't care. You're wrong about me. I _have_ to treat Ellie as an experimental subject. That's my job, and that's my duty as a researcher. But, that doesn't mean I don't care about her. It doesn't mean I want to see her unhappy."

Joel's ire is fading, at least a little. Still . . . "You," he tells them, "Are both goddamn idiots."

He doesn't get any arguments. Now that the danger is past, Jerry seems to be getting the shakes, and Abby is still half out of breath. Joel pulls two water bottles from his bag and tosses one to each of them. "The infected will get bored in a couple of hours. We'll be able to sneak out of here after that." He nudges Abby's arm. "Now, c'mon, girl, let's find something to clean out that shoulder."

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being a bit of an interlude, with some light zombie-killing. Expect shit to start hitting the fan with the next chapter. As always, reviews are treasured and concrit is appreciated.


	4. The Parable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anderson starts a clinical trial and Ellie gets her hopes up.

The first time they let Joel observe a procedure, he's five minutes in before he wonders why he ever fought for the privilege. He tamps down immediately on the selfish impulse. If this is rough on _him,_ it's nothing to how Ellie's feeling.

She's lying on her stomach in the refurbished operating room, a hairnet over her head, her body completely covered by a blue drape except for a soft-ball sized hole cut out over her tailbone. Joel is dressed the same as Anderson and the two nurses - scrubs, cap, mask. He's sitting on a stool near her head because the nurses insisted he not stand. They didn't seem moved when he pointed out that he wasn't exactly squeamish.

As he squeezes Ellie's hand, though, he starts to think that maybe Nurse Mia knows what she's talking about. The gleaming tray behind him holds a disturbing number of steel syringes and very large needles. He tries not to look at those. The air is close and smells of alcohol - real rubbing alcohol, not the hooch they usually use to scrub out wounds on the road. The snap of latex as Dr. Anderson puts on his gloves is oddly alien - familiar from emergency rooms a lifetime ago, on the few occasions when he'd show up with a broken wrist or a nail through his calf or a colicky baby on his shoulder, but strange and foreign to this new world.

"You doin' okay, kiddo?" he asks, even though they haven't even poked her yet.

"Peachy," she says, her voice a little slurred from the light sedative they gave her. She squeezes his hand a little tighter.

Joel looks back at Anderson. "Tell me again why you couldn't just do this like the bone marrow biopsy?"

Jerry nods to a nurse, who starts drawing up lidocaine. "We need more for a donation," he explains, "And it has to be completely uncontaminated. It's a routine procedure. People used to donate all the time before the outbreak. For leukemia patients and so forth."

Joel grunts and looks away.

"It'll be worth it, right?" Ellie says. "My bone marrow. You can cure somebody with it. Or, make them immune, at least."

"It _could_ lead to a breakthrough."

"That means that they'll try," Joel says in a tone of caution that falls on deaf ears.

"You'll feel a pinch now, Ellie," the nurse says. With steady hands, the woman injects the lidocaine not just once but at several sites all around Ellie's back.

Ellie groans. "Ow . . . ow, fuck that hurts. Teeny tiny needles shouldn't hurt that much."

Joel pats her forearm. "Yeah, lidocaine sucks. I remember . . ." He pauses, but he needs something to take her mind off things, so he blabbers out the first story that comes to mind. "I remember this one time . . . must've been at least twenty-five years ago, I sliced my arm open on a circular saw and had to get it stitched up. By the time they were halfway through numbing me up, I was practically begging the doc to just stop and stitch it already."

Ellie's eyes are closed, but she flinches as a nurse swabs her back with iodine. "They gave you lidocaine just for a cut?"

"We had plenty of it, back then. It was supposed to be nicer than just sewing wounds up. I disagreed, after that."

Anderson adjusts his gloves and picks up one of the larger needles. "Okay, Ellie, you should just feel some pressure."

Joel looks away, focusing on her face, where her deeply furrowed brow suggests its more than just pressure. "What's . . . what's a circular saw?"

He forces a smile. "It's a power tool. Think of a saw . . . but the blade is a disk that spins. There's still some around. This place probably has a couple for maintenance."

"I think I saw . . . something like that in a comic, once. But, it was a guy's hands. His whole hands were just these spinning saw blades."

"That don't sound practical."

"It wasn't."

"Okay, that's a good sample." Joel glances back at Dr. Anderson and immediately regrets it when he sees the thick red fluid filling the syringe. He's not done, though. He sets the syringe aside and picks up another, just as large. Joel hurries to find something to say.

"Well I . . . I had enough trouble just with the real thing. As if it wasn't bad enough I gashed myself, I had to fall out of the damn tree doing it."

Ellie laughs, but the sound trails off into a groan as Jerry inserts the needle. "Why the fuck were you up a tree with a power saw?"

"Makin' a tree house."

"A tree house . . . Imma be honest, I kinda thought those were made up for books."

"Oh, they were real. Kids loved 'em."

Anderson seems to be having a little more trouble getting his sample this time. He grinds the needle back and forth until Ellie whimpers.

"Of course, ours wasn't much of a house. More of a platform with a couple of rickety walls."

Ellie is wincing but trying to smile at the same time. "But, let me guess, she totally loved it and that made it all worth it, plus you ended up with a bitching scar to impress all the ladies."

"Something like that."

"There we go," Anderson says at last. He pulls the needle out, remind Joel one more time of just how _long_ it is, and snaps his gloves off. "We got what we need. You were a trooper, Ellie."

The shields of bravado are coming up, stronger than before. She smirks. "Thanks, do I get a cool hat?"

Joel can't quite stop himself from leaning down to drop a quick kiss to her hairnet. She looks up at him with a question in her eyes. He makes himself smile. "Proud of you, kiddo."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

A few days later, Joel begs off the morning scavenging run so he can be present for the first stage of the test. He waits with Jerry and Marlene behind a one-way mirror looking into an operating room that's been fortified like a prison. Anderson is keyed up, talking about destiny and huge leaps forward, but all Joel can do is watch the test subject - a man in his forties who'd apparently volunteered in hopes of becoming the second immune person in the world. He's pale and a little weak - according to Anderson's only-slightly-condescending briefing, they'd had to irradiate the volunteer to kill off his own bone marrow before transplanting Ellie's. All the same, he manages a smile and a thumbs up as a pair of orderlies tie him into a chair with thick nylon straps.

"Are you sure this is gonna work?" Joel asks quietly.

Anderson gives him a look. "I'm not _sure_ of anything. It's all theoretical. But, this is the best chance we've had in a long time. We basically gave him Ellie's immune system."

"But," Joel says simply.

Jerry nods, his face tempered with a hint of apprehension. "But. The only way to know if he's immune is to try to infect him."

"And if it fails?" Marlene asks. Her face is tight with tension.

"If it fails, then we've still ruled out a lot of the mechanisms by which Ellie's immunity might work. We can narrow down our list, regroup, and try something else."

Joel's lip twists. "Does that fellow know he might be dying so you can narrow down your list?"

"He does, actually."

Joel grinds his teeth for a moment, then takes a breath. "And, what if it works?"

Jerry's eyebrows shoot up. "Beg pardon?"

"What if he's immune? Ellie just spent two days flat on her stomach 'cause it hurt too much to sit. She can't do this for everyone in the world."

Anderson waves a hand. "Of course not. It'd never be a feasible large-scale treatment option. But, we could start isolating which part of her immune system grants her immunity. And we'd have another test subject - this one an adult male who could give us a lot more in terms of pure sampling opportunities."

The cold way that Anderson talks about blood and tissue never fails to send a chill down Joel's spine, but he shakes it off. Better that this poor bastard be on the receiving end of the big needles. At least he fucking volunteered.

One of the orderlies pulls out a gas mask attached to long, plastic tubing, and nearly everyone flinches. The subject's face is completely bloodless as the orderly presses it against his face and pulls the straps tight. He nods once

There's a control panel in front of Anderson with just a couple of buttons. For all his talk of destiny, his hands are shaking when the time comes. He presses his lips together, firms his jaw, and presses the largest button.

A hiss reaches their ears, sounding loud in the pin drop silence. In an oxygen tank in the far corner of the room, a canister is opening. The orderlies both put on standard gas masks, in case of any mishaps.

The clear plastic tubing attached to the subject's mask suddenly clouds with the brown haze of spores. They whistle down the long tubing and fill the mask in an instant, thick enough to almost obscure the subject's face. The reaction is immediate. The man doubles over, wracked by violent coughing. He's almost convulsing against the straps that hold him. One of the orderlies cautiously puts a hand on his shoulder.

After thirty seconds that feel like hours, a timer beeps on Anderson's control pad and he jabs another button. Suction kicks in with a gentle _brr_ and after a few moments, the face shield of the mask is clear again, the spores filtered away. The coughing continues, a desperate choking sound.

The orderlies don thick rubber gloves and carefully remove the mask. Both it and its victim's face are carefully sluiced with a solution to deactivate the remaining spores. One of the orderlies steadies the man while another holds a scanner to his ear. It beeps softly and they all stare at the green glow of a positive.

"Doesn't necessarily mean anything," Marlene says after a long pause, "Ellie reads as positive too."

The man is still coughing, his chest heaving as he tries to draw breath. Joel's lips tighten. "Ellie's never coughed like that."

Jerry clears his throat. "Well, there's nothing to do now but wait. We'll keep monitoring him. This could work, but we knew it wasn't going to be easy."

Joel glances up at a clock on the wall and sighs. "I'm due for four hours on the wall. I'll check back in after." He turns to go but pauses at the door. "Don't mention this to Ellie. At least not 'til we know, one way or the other."

"Yeah," Marlene says, distracted, "Of course."

Shaking his head, Joel leaves them to their watch and goes to start his own.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

After four hours of baking in the sun and watching tumbleweeds roll past, Joel would just about kill for something cold to drink. Still, he passes the mess hall without pausing, trudges up two flights of stairs, and nods his way past the guards to get back to the observation room. Marlene and Jerry are still there. Someone's brought a folding metal chair, and Jerry is sitting, shoulders slumped, head dipping almost to his chest as he studies his own palms. Marlene is leaning against the glass, one arm over her head. She straightens when she sees Joel and shakes her head.

Knowing what he's going to find, Joel steps into the room and looks through the glass. He sighs. "Shit."

In the operating theater, the subject is still strapped to the chair, though his arms are bleeding in a dozen places from the restraints. He's soaked in sweat and trembling with fever. The orderlies are gone - too dangerous for them to stay. The man keeps trying to speak, but his voice comes out slurred and garbled, threaded through with pain and rage. It's classic early-stage infection, but he's not quite senseless yet, which is the real horror of it.

"That didn't take long," Joel says quietly.

Jerry is shaking his head, his face grim but composed. "Infection by a massive dose of inhaled spores is the fastest route. That's why we chose it."

"And why aren't you doing anything?"

The heel of Marlene's hand thuds off the glass. "What is there _to_ do? It didn't work."

Joel stares at them and shakes his head. He pulls out his revolver, checks the cylinder, and turns toward the door.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Jerry's voice is suddenly alarmed. He springs to his feet, his malaise forgotten.

"He's turning."

"Yes, we know."

"Well, somebody's gotta put him out of his misery."

"Joel, no." Marlene grabs his arm. "It's an experiment. We have to let it play out."

"Oh, like you've never watched somebody turn before? We need to fucking study it?"

"We need to study _how_ he turns," Anderson is saying, "We need to time the stages, take some serology samples along the way, and determine whether Ellie's bone marrow altered the process at all. Afterwards, autopsy will give us a lot more information. But, we can't do that if you splatter my test subject's brains all over the wall."

"Joel," Marlene says, soft and urgent, "His name was Ryan. He signed up for this. He knew what it might mean."

Joel lets out a sigh that's more of a growl. But, he holsters his gun. Anderson is shaking his head in that disgusted way he gets when it's clear he thinks Joel is a fucking savage, but he lets it go.

"We have enough bone marrow left for one more donation. Ellie was exposed transdermally - we could try that, see if the results are any different."

"You want to try the exact same thing _again_?"

"The immune response in the subcutaneous tissues works completely differently than it does in the lungs. It might be enough to modulate the fungus's life cycle or even induce a mutation . . . Y'know what? Take a year of immunology and _then_ maybe I could fill you in on the details."

That gets Joel's back up, as it's doubtless intended to. Marlene discreetly steps between them, but Joel limits his response to narrowed eyes and a dark tone of voice. "All I'm saying is that you seem pretty damn eager to move on to the next _test subject_ before this one's even cold."

Marlene spins on him, her temper flaring. "Jesus, Joel, you are not this fucking naive! Did you think it was gonna be simple? That we'd just wave our wand and, _poof_ , cure's made? This is the culmination of _twenty years_ of research by hundreds of scientists, and all but one of them is dead. You want us to cry because it didn't work out for Ryan? Do you honestly think this is the first time we've lost a subject?"

"And that doesn't give you even a second's pause? How many more, Marlene? How many are you gonna put in that damn chair?"

"As many as we fucking have to!" 

Joel's head snaps up. He's never heard Anderson curse like that before.

The doctor's fists are balled and his eyes are hard. "We're dying. As a species. Do you get that? Humanity is dying, and with it every last human, whether they're bit or not. And we can either lie down and take it or we can try and fight. There's no study design, no ethics committee that's going to get us through this with our hands clean - we tried all that. Cordyceps doesn't infect mice or rats or dogs or pigs or monkeys - it only wants us. So, yeah, we make some tough choices, but what we're _choosing_ is survival. Which still beats the hell out of the alternative."

Joel's temper ebbs during Anderson's tirade, but it doesn't leave acceptance in its wake. He suddenly feels very old and very tired. "How much do you practice that little speech?" he says quietly.

Jerry looks away. "Get the fuck out of my lab, Joel."

He nods and turns for the door but pauses with his hand on the knob. "There's one more thing." He turns to face them. "Somebody's gonna have to tell Ellie it didn't work. Any volunteers?"

Marlene bows her head, her shoulders slumping in defeat. Jerry glares at the glass.

"Yeah. Didn't think so."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

She's lying on her belly with a book in her hands, but she looks up when Joel enters the clean room.

"Hey, kiddo."

She rolls over, wincing a little, and slides a comic between the pages of the novel to act as a bookmark. "Hey."

"That one of the books Abby got you?"

"Yeah." She shows him the cover.

" _Parable of the Sower_ . . ." Something about that niggles his memory of a long-ago Sunday School. He arches an eyebrow. "That a church book?"

Ellie laughs. "No. It's sci-fi. Or something like that, at least. It's weird and really dark, but I kind of dig it?"

He sits on the edge of the bed. "What's it about?"

She turns it over in her hands. "So, I guess it came out before the outbreak 'cause there's no infected, but the world kind of sucks anyway. Everything's drying out and people are starving. And there's this girl . . . she figures out that the only way humans are gonna survive is if they go to the stars. Of course, her home gets destroyed by hunters because everything sucks, but she forms this . . . group. She finds all these people that believe in her, and they're trying to get up north where it's safe. Where, I guess they're gonna build the spaceships or something."

Joel grunts. "Well, people always did like end of the world stories."

She sets the book aside and gives him a look that says that she knows he's stalling. She waits for him to say what he's come to say.

He folds his hands and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Ellie . . . the parable of the sower - the original one, from the Bible? It was about how not everybody makes it in the end. But, you just gotta . . . keep pushing forward, keep planting seeds, and focus on the ones that do."

Her face falls. "What are you saying?" she says, though it's clear that she already knows.

"The . . . the transplant didn't work. The test subject . . . he turned."

Breath punches out of her. She curls in on herself, one hand subconsciously reaching back to rub at her tailbone.

"Now, Anderson says he still learned something from the test. They're gonna keep trying, and we just gotta be patient. This is a roadblock, okay? It's not the end of the line."

She nods and swallows hard. Her face is strained, but her eyes are dry.

"Ellie? You okay?"

"Yeah," she says, quick and breathy.

"Ellie . . ."

"I'm okay. Keep moving forward, right? We knew it wasn't gonna be easy."

But, there's something a little older and a little bleaker in her face, and they both know this isn't the last time they'll have this conversation.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Parable of the Sower" is a novel by Octavia Butler. It is very dark and very much worth a read.
> 
> The next chapter may be delayed by a couple days due to my work schedule. As always, reviews and concrit are appreciated.


	5. Conscientious Objector, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel gives Ellie a gift and sees something he's not supposed to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter could potentially be triggering to people with a history of eating disorders. Or people with needle phobia (*shudders*).

"Okay, Ellie," Mia says, "Lidocaine now."

Ellie winces before the needle even touches her. "My favorite." She doesn't flinch, though, as the nurse numbs a small, circular area, three inches below her right collarbone. Not much seems to bother her, these days. In the three weeks since the bone marrow transplant, she's donated what seems like buckets of blood. When they couldn't take any more without making her anemic, she'd had to spend half a day with a tube in her arm, attached to a machine that filtered out her plasma and returned the blood cells. She has purple marks up and down her arms and hands, and the crooks of her elbows are starting to scar.

There's not much to show for all that. In the six weeks since Ryan, five more test subjects have turned despite treatment with some combination of her marrow, blood, or plasma. Joel is no longer invited to observe the tests, which suits him just fine. And, Ellie has stopped asking about them.

Joel carefully rearranges the blanket that protects her modesty. The operating room is cold. Jerry gives him a cool look. "Don't. You could contaminate the drape, and then we'd have to re-scrub."

Joel sits down and squeezes her hand. She squeezes back, without looking at him. He doesn't have to babble on about bullshit from his past just to keep her mind occupied. These kinds of procedures are starting to feel like just part of their daily routine.

Dr. Anderson's hands are moving steadily and efficiently. With one, he holds an ultrasound probe against Ellie's side, keeping his eyes glued on a grainy screen of abstract gray and black blobs. With the other, he directs a needle attached to a long, thread-like wire, pushing it deep into Ellie's chest. There seem to be a lot of steps involved after that, and Joel doesn't try to follow it all except to take note when Anderson sets down the ultrasound probe and picks up a gleaming scalpel. Joel gently turns Ellie's chin away, but he can't tear his own eyes from the sight. The incision is small in the grand scheme of things - just a straight, three inch cut. The next few minutes, though, involve way too much tugging and cutting under the skin

Ellie whimpers. Joel pats her hand awkwardly. "You're doing great, kiddo."

Anderson looks up, as if surprised by the reminder that there's an awake patient on his table. "Almost done." The device in his hand is an inch-long disc that looks like a rubber button or stopper - the port. He attaches it to a bit of white tubing already in her chest - the catheter - and pushes the whole contraption into the space he's made under the skin. "Okay. Nothing left but the sutures." He sews the incision closed with quick, economical movements until all that's visible is a tiny red line and a rounded lump, with the port, the catheter, and even the sutures entirely under the skin.

Joel's brow furrows. "Why sew the skin over top? I thought the point was to _not_ have to poke her."

"This will let her lead a more normal life. She can shower, even swim with it in."

Ellie snorts, a little giddy from the sedative. "Uh, about that last part . . ."

Joel smiles. "Oh, trust me, that's the first lesson when we get out of here."

Anderson clears his throat, his eyes on his work. "Point is, it's a trade off. The Port-a-Cath will let us draw blood without damaging her veins. Yes, there's a pinch when the needle goes through the skin, but we can give her topical anesthetics for that."

"It's not the poking I mind," Ellie says with her eyes closed, "It's the fishing around after."

"Well, no more fishing." To prove his point, Anderson jabs a short needle through the still-numb skin and into the port below. Blood flows back. He injects some sort of clear liquid and then pulls the needle out and covers the incision with an adhesive bandage. "We're good. You'll have to keep this clean and dry for about a week while it heals."

"Roger that."

One of the nurses - Mia - is approaching the table with Ellie's hospital gown in her hands. "If you gentlemen will give us some privacy . . ."

Joel nods and follows Anderson out into the scrub room. Together, they doff their masks, hairnets, and shoe covers while the two women work quickly and efficiently to get Ellie back into her gown and move her to a gurney for the short trip back to her room. Joel watches as they push her out the door. "Were either of those kids even born yet when the outbreak started?"

Jerry snorts. "They were. Not sure Nancy was out of diapers, though." He shrugs. "You don't have to worry about their competency. They're trained extensively."

"Yeah, but it's not like it used to be, is it? With med school and nursing school and all that?"

"Suppose not."

"Hell, those girls probably don't even remember what medicine used to be like."

Jerry grunts and rinses the excess powder from his hands. Joel studies him for a moment, calculating.

"Thing is, doc, I do."

Anderson looks at him, his face suddenly much more cautious. "You got something you want to say, Joel?"

Joel keeps his voice just barely diplomatic. "Jus' that I've seen permanent IVs like that. Back before. In these little shriveled up skeleton kids with bald heads, all wrapped up with blankets and teddy bears."

Jerry sighs, short and impatient. "That's not the same thing, and you know it."

"What I _know_ is that those catheters go both ways. And there's only so much you can learn from scanning and rescanning her brain or drawing her blood twenty times a day, so how long until you move on to something a mite less benign?"

"We're focusing on sampling and imaging, for now. It's the safest option until we can start to piece out the mechanism of her immunity."

"And if that's a dead end?"

"Then, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. All I can promise you is that we'll talk about it."

Joel swallows a growl and turns for the door, shaking his head. Anderson calls after him. "I hope you're not working Ellie up with this kind of paranoia. Experimental treatments and mad science or whatever it is you think we're doing here."

Joel turns to look at him, his face sardonic. "That girl? No, she ain't scared of the mad science. She'd probably think it was cool."

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A week later, Joel arrives for his evening visit and finds Ellie sitting at her desk, sketching. They've moved a bit more furniture into the clean room - a dented metal desk, a couple of chairs, a bookshelf cobbled together from old milk crates. As much as Joel appreciates the attempt at creature comforts, they've also done a lot to chip away at his pleasant delusion that this might all be over by next week.

She smiles when she sees him, but doesn't get up. To Joel's eyes, she looks tired and a little haggard.

"How you holding up?" he asks. He gestures vaguely at the catheter site. "Still sore?"

"Nope. Just . . . feels weird." She pinches her skin, rolling the buried port back and forth between her fingers.

"Yeah, well . . . don't pick at it, okay?"

"Roger dodger." She belated notices the strap over his shoulder. A slow smile spreads across her face. "What's that?"

Joel's lip twitches, but he suppresses an answering smile. "Nothin'."

"C'mon, Joel what did you bring me?"

Joel loses the resulting staring contest by cracking a wide smile. He swings the six-string guitar down from his shoulder. The warm wood gleams with polish. He was up half the night getting it fixed up. "Found this out on one of my runs. Figured we'd wait until the Fireflies were done with you, but given that we've both got some time on our hands . . ." He strums one chord, then another. It's been years, but the muscle memory comes back fast.

Ellie is grinning now, though she still looks weary. "You gonna sing? I seem to recall something about an aspiring singer."

He snorts instead. "Not on your life. I know where my talents lie." He strums one more chord, then picks out a few bars of a melody he used to know well. "Besides, this one's for you."

"For me?"

He perches on the edge of the bed and pats the mattress to his right. She gets up and tucks herself in beside him so that he can settle the instrument on her lap. He arranges her left hand on the neck of the guitar. "This is your fretboard. The little metal things are your frets. Why don't you try strumming jus' one string to start."

She plucks at the sixth string with her thumb. "Aren't you supposed to have a little plastic thing?"

"It's called a pick. You can, but long run, you can do more if you learn to pick out the strings with your fingers." He wraps an arm around her and plucks out a few strings with his index, middle, and ring fingers, demonstrating. She nods, focused, and lets him reposition her hands. "Use the tips of your fingers. You pinch here and strum, it makes the sound higher. You pinch down here . . ." He slides her fingers down a few frets. "Makes it even higher. Try a few. Different strings, if you can."

She plucks a note on the sixth string, then drops her hand to the first string and strums. She's twisting the guitar in her hand and leaning forward, trying to watch the position of her fingers on the fretboard. Joel gently corrects her grip. "You'll want to be looking at the side. Keep an eye on those little dots to see where you are. Feel for the strings. An' sit up a little straighter." He rests a hand on her back to fix her posture, but pauses at the feel. Something's not right. She's always been skinny, but he can feel her ribs and the knobbly bones of her spine. His brow furrows. "Ellie? Have you been losing weight?"

She hears the change in his tone and tenses a little. "Huh? Why?" Her voice is just a little too innocent.

"You're thinner."

"Well, I'm wasting away, cooped up in here. Guess I gotta start doing some pushups. That's what Abby says, anyway." She's pulling away from him and cradling the guitar to her body, but now that Joel is looking, he can pick out the subtle changes. Her collar bones stick out sharply. Her face is thinner. He can count the bones in her hand. She looked like that in Colorado, after weeks of nursing his useless ass back to health. It had taken a solid month on the road, and every spare calorie they could hunt or scavenge, before she'd looked normal again.

Most damning - and he can't believe he didn't pick up on it sooner - is that she's wearing a baggy, long-sleeved shirt, though it's nearly August and the top-floor room isn't air conditioned. She's trying to hide it.

"Have you been feeling sick?"

"Uh, maybe a little."

"When's the last time you ate?"

"Um, I guess I just haven't been that hungry lately?" She stands and goes to lay the guitar down on her desk. Right on cue, her stomach growls loudly. Joel doesn't even bother to dignify that with a skeptical look.

" _When,_ Ellie?"

She looks at him, her face torn, her mouth open with an excuse that just won't come. At length, her shoulders slump. "Yesterday morning."

He takes a moment just to boggle at just how something like this could happen. _Here. Now._ To _Ellie._ "Yesterday _morning_?"

"Dunno if you've noticed, but the food around here kind of sucks ass."

"Uh huh. Now you're picky. I've seen you make a meal out of canned pineapple and a tin of sardines, but now you just decide to skip five meals because you've got it in for mashed potatoes."

"It's not that big a deal . . ."

"Bullshit." He spends one frozen moment reflecting on just how far out of his depth he is. He makes himself soften his voice. "Ellie, what is going on? I know these past couple months have been rough, but . . . what the hell is going through your head right now?"

She drops into a chair and leans forward, her face just this side of panicked. "Don't freak out, okay? He said you'd freak out, but it's all under control."

That's the moment when Joel realizes it's worse than he thought. " _He_? Who the hell is _he_?"

Her face draws up in an anticipatory wince. "Dr. Anderson."

Joel springs to his feet and Ellie flinches. That makes him take a step back. He forces down the instinct to pace like an animal in a cage, instead breathing slowly and steadily through his nose until he's sure he can make his voice very even. "What does Dr. Anderson have to do with this?"

Ellie drops her head to her hands, giving Joel way too much opportunity to count the bones in her wrists. "It's just part of a study. Medical calorie restriction. He had this theory that it might activate the Cordyceps in my brain. I told him about Colorado. He thought it was weird how after all that, I was still able to . . . you know. He thought maybe the fungus gave me extra strength or something. He had this complicated mechanism worked out and he wanted to test it."

"So, he took your food away."

"I agreed to it! I wanted to try it."

There's cold fire burning in Joel's chest, trying to scream out his throat, but he forces it down. He pulls up the other chair, sits down, and takes Ellie by both hands. "Baby girl. You survived Colorado because you are the toughest, bravest, most _relentless_ kid I've ever met. Didn't have nothing to do with your Cordyceps. And Anderson shouldn't of needed to _fucking starve you_ to figure that out." He pauses for long moments, letting that sink in. He keeps his voice soft. "How long's this been going on?"

She won't look at him, but she doesn't pull her hands away either. "Almost three weeks. We were supposed to do one more week and then repeat some brain scans and do some physiologic tests to see what's changed. He had this whole plan . . . he was making sure it was safe."

"Who else knows? The nurses?"

A nod. "They both checked with me, to make sure I was okay with it."

Joel wets his lips. "Marlene?"

"I . . . I don't think she knows. She doesn't visit much. And she doesn't really ask questions."

Not that Joel has much room to be pissed at Marlene when he's been spending an hour with Ellie _every fucking day_ and hadn't seen what was going on right under his nose. He squeezes her hands. "Ellie. Look at me." She reluctantly lifts her head. "Why'd you lie? Why keep this from me?"

"Dr. Anderson said . . . he said you'd never understand. That it would just . . . scare you or worry you or piss you off. And honestly . . ." a hint of challenge creeps into her eyes, "Tell me he was wrong."

Now Joel's the one to look away. He takes another slow breath. "Ellie, I know you think you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders. But, you _cannot_ be doing this. You can't be keeping secrets from me, _especially_ if it's Anderson telling you to do it."

"I'm sorry, okay? Please don't flip out."

"Ellie, this ends. Now."

She ducks her head and nods. Joel squeezes her hands one more time and then lets go.

"I gotta go."

" _Joel . . ._ "

"We'll talk about this later. I ain't . . . I ain't mad at you."

She doesn't try to stop him.

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Jerry is in a meeting with Marlene and a half dozen other Firefly operatives. From the solemn expressions and the large map of the city spread out on the table between them, it looks important. Joel doesn't care.

Anderson's back is to him as he stands over the table, so he doesn't see Joel elbow his way through the door, shaking off the guard. The doctor hears the commotion and is just starting to turn when Joel grabs him by the back of the neck and slams his head straight down into the formica tabletop, leaving a smear of blood on the map. Anderson shoves himself back up, staggering, his nose gushing as the room erupts with curses and shouts of alarm, but before anyone can work out a coherent response, Joel spins the doctor and swings a hook into his cheekbone. Something crunches - whether in Jerry's face or Joel's hand, he's not sure, and it doesn't matter. He yanks the man down into a knee strike that bruises ribs.

"You told her to _fucking_ lie to me." Joel's voice is icy and even - neither a whisper nor a roar.

The guard from the door, aided by two of the burlier operatives in the meeting, manages to haul Joel back. Someone else drives a fist into his gut, and before Joel can quite straighten from that, Marlene is jumping between them. "What the _fuck,_ Joel?"

"Ask him!" he snarls, yanking an arm free to point at Anderson, "Ask him about his _other_ study. The _secret_ one that he could only talk about with his little cronies and a fourteen-year-old girl. Ask him what gives him the right to _fucking starve_ the girl just to prove some crackpot theory."

That knocks her back a half a step. "Starve," she says slowly. She helps Anderson straighten with a hand on his shoulder and passes him a handkerchief to press against his bleeding nose. Her voice is terse but collected. "Any of that true, Jerry?"

Anderson glances up at her, sighs, and slumps again. "It was a controlled environment . . ."

"Jesus Christ, doctor, when you brought that calorie restriction plan to me, I _told_ you it was over the line! Told you exactly why, too. And that was a month ago."

"It was low risk! I was just . . ."

"You were just torturing a kid!" Joel snaps. "She's the most important kid in this facility, if not the damn world, and you decide to starve her just to _see if you were right._ So, don't tell me you were _just._ " He draws a breath. "This ends. Now."

Anderson is panting. His nose bubbles despite his best efforts not to breathe through it. He nods shortly.

Marlene is pinching her brow between finger and thumb, her face pained, but when Joel goes to pull away from the guard holding him, her eyes snap open. "Not so fast, _Private._ " Her voice is hard. "There's crossing the line, and then there's _punching your commanding officer in the face_ levels of crossing the line."

Anderson tosses the bloody handkerchief onto the tabletop and shakes his head. "Take him to the brig," he tells the guard. His eyes shift to Joel's. "We'll talk about this later."

"I look forward to it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All forms of feedback are much appreciated.


	6. Conscientious Objector, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel faces the consequences of his actions. Jerry comes clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for violence, brief reference to corporeal punishment.

The trick to taking a beating is to lean _into_ the punches. The two Fireflies holding Joel clearly want to shove him back against the corrugated metal wall where he'll have fewer options to fight back. Trouble is, that would double the force of the punches their buddy is landing into Joel's ribs and gut. So, Joel doesn't overtly struggle against the hands holding his shoulders, but he does half-foil them with little lunges forward in time with the blows, so that he can give with the hits and not bruise his back as bad as his front.

They're getting tired - these three boys manning the old storage room-turned-prison. They started in on him as soon as they'd gotten him in here and stripped him of his weapons. Well, most of his weapons. They missed the shiv tucked into the lining of his jacket. He doesn't reach for it, though, because he knows the difference between a retributive asskicking and actual attempted murder, and this is clearly the former. Besides, they haven't cracked anything yet, and Joel doubts they can keep this up much longer. They've been skipping PT, clearly.

Across the room, a door creaks open and a voice cries out with rehearsed outrage. "Hey, cut that out! We're not barbarians."

These boys won't be winning any Oscars. They don't even feign surprise. Choreographed as a musical number, the two holding him shove him to the ground and all three file out the door. Joel pushes himself up to sit, panting but refusing to give Anderson more of a response than that. All the blows landed on his ribs and gut where they could be concealed; the Fireflies were careful not to touch his face.

Jerry's face, on the other hand, is already a mess of purple and red. A spectacular bruise is blooming over his cheekbone and his nose looks like an overripe strawberry. It's a messy, public kind of injury, and one that takes weeks or months to fully go away. Joel admires it for a moment.

"I'm sorry about that." Anderson jerks his head at the departed mooks. "They weren't acting on orders."

Joel hauls himself onto the thin mattress on the floor and wraps one arm around his knees. The other is still shielding his side. "Yeah. I bet."

"Are you injured?"

"What do you think?"

"Your ribs . . . can you breathe okay?"

"Can you?"

Thwarted of the chance to playact benevolence, Jerry narrows his eyes and grits his teeth. "What the hell were you doing back there?"

"Thought I was pretty clear with my complaints."

"Look, if you've got an issue with my studies, you bring that to me. _Privately._ You don't throw a tantrum in front of half my command structure."

"Bring it to you privately, huh? So you can hush it up privately? No thanks. You _made her lie for you_."

"Because I knew you'd be unreasonable, and frankly I don't have a free week to fill you in on the science."

"Oh, fuck your _science._ You were over the line, and you know it.

Anderson's face hardens. "I don't think you get how this works."

"I've got some notion."

The doctor approaches him and drops into a crouch, within striking distance. "I have a pandemic to stop - one that has pushed us to the brink of extinction. _Nothing_ is more important. We're talking fate of the world. What's one little girl compared to that?"

Joel grabs him by the collar and hauls him close. "What the _fuck_ are you saying?"

Anderson doesn't flinch. "We need Ellie. We need her alive. We don't need you." He pauses. "But, she does."

Joel shoves him away. "You think I'm scared of your threats?"

"Of course not. Why should you care if you die? You haven't been alive in years. That little girl, though . . . she'd care, wouldn't she? And, yeah, she's a strong kid, but do you think she's strong enough to go through this on her own?" Joel opens his mouth to snap back, but Jerry cuts him off. "Think about it, Joel. Because that's what you're risking when you fly off at the handle like this. Whether we end up having to kill you or just kick you out of Utah, the result for Ellie will be the same. You'll be gone, and she will never find out what happened to you." He stands. "I'll give you three days to think about it. Maybe decide which side you want to end up on." He pauses by the door, his back to the room. "We don't have to be your enemy, Joel."

Joel doesn't dignify that with a response.

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After three days of sleeping on a two-inch mattress and pissing in a bedpan, Joel is released on his own recognizance. His first stop is the showers. The guards left him alone after that first day - they're not barbarians. Still, his chest and abdomen are a mess of purple, which earns him a few looks in the communal showers. As soon as he's washed the grunge out, he pulls on a tee shirt and thick flannel, his expression daring anyone to say something.

His next stop is Ellie's room. It's mid-morning and he's way outside of his usual evening visiting hours, but the guards wave him through without question.

He finds her sitting at her desk with a massive tray of food in front of her. She glares up at him. "Happy now, asshole?"

Something unclenches in his chest. His lip quirks. "A little." He steps close and stares down at a towering pile of what looks remarkably like tater tots. He plucks one from the top, dunks it in ketchup, and pops it in his mouth. Yep, tastes like tater tots, too. "I didn't know they still made these."

"Yeah, yeah, it's a fucking modern miracle." Her eyes narrow. "You broke Dr. Anderson's _face._ "

"Yeah. And?"

" _And?!!!_ You don't think that qualifies as _freaking out_? Which I specifically _begged_ you not to do?"

"I wasn't 'freaking out.' I had a point to make, and I made it."

"And fuck any nasal septum that gets in the way, right?"

Joel spits her with a look. "He was over the line. He knows that now, even if you don't."

"Jesus, Joel, you're fucking hopeless, you know that?" Her small fist swings out, oozing annoyance. Unfortunately, it catches him right in the rib that came the closest to cracking, and a small _oof_ of pain escapes him before he can smother it. Her eyes widen. "What?"

"Nothing," Joel says.

"Oh, yeah?" She springs at him and grabs at the bottom of his shirts, jerking them up just high enough to get an impression of bruised skin before he pulls away. "Jesus Christ." Her voice is suddenly less angry than shaken. "Anderson said he just locked you up for a couple days."

"It's the cost of doing business."

" _Business_? They tried to punch your spleen out and you wanna talk to me about _business_?"

"I expected something like this before I ever hit the doc. Honestly, they were more restrained than I thought they'd be."

Her eyes are wide and horrified, but her voice is hard. "Show me."

"Ellie . . ."

"What? You've been checking on my every boo-boo for weeks. Fucking show me."

He sighs, unbuttons his flannel, and tugs the shirt up, exposing the bruises. He half turns. "Happy now?"

Her face is bloodless. "Joel . . ."

"Hey. Settle down. It really ain't a big deal." He sighs, dropping the shirt. "Any gang out here would've done the same or worse. Now, the Fireflies might be trying to save the world, but at the end of the day, they're still a gang. They've gotta operate like one."

"Anderson _said . . ._ "

"Okay, look at it this way. Once upon a time before the outbreak, punching some random guy like that would've landed me in jail for a month or three, so I could think about the consequences of my actions. Nobody's got time for that anymore - there's no point in locking someone up if they're just an extra mouth to feed. So, they find quicker ways of getting their point across."

"So, they fucking beat the shit out of you?"

"Oh, come on, you saying you never got your ass whooped at that school of yours?"

"Well . . . that was . . . _different_! That was . . . _rulers_ and shit, not fucking bare-knuckled boxing!"

"Honestly, Ellie? I've had worse. And I'd have taken worse if that's what it took to get Anderson to back off."

She backs away and sits down hard. "You're such a fucking idiot."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, why the _fuck_ do you think I lied to you? Because I knew if you knew, you'd fly off, do something _stupid,_ and get yourself hurt. And, then what happens to me, huh? Jesus, Joel, I can't _do this_ on my own!"

There's something sharp in Joel's throat, almost cutting off his breath. He can feel the walls of a cage solidifying around him, tighter and more secure than anything the Fireflies could've built. "I know," he says quietly, "I'm not goin' anywhere."

She looks up at him. "Y'know, I actually _like_ Anderson most of the time? He's funny if you're not constantly antagonizing him. He treats me like I'm an adult. But, he _will_ kill you if you keep fucking with him. And I'm not okay with that."

"I know," he says again.

She sighs, and looks away. He sees the moment when something in her wavers as well. Her hands are shaking. Without warning, she stands up and throws her arms around him. Joel hugs her back and grits his teeth, making sure that no grunt or whimper escapes his lips when she collides with his battered chest. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "I shouldn't have lied." Her hands fist in his shirt. "I don't want to lose you."

Deep in his chest, he feels some part of himself breaking apart. Dying. Dissolving into dust. For once in his life, he lets it happen without a fight. "I know," he whispers, "I'm gonna stay right here."

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The north side of the wall is always the least interesting. At least on the east and south, they occasionally get target practice when some poor clicker wanders by. North side is nothing but empty streets, most of the time. Joel sits in the silly lifeguard chair, rifle over his knees, staring out into the dark. There's floodlights behind him, but nothing to see ahead, and there won't be until sunrise four hours from now.

"Joel!" 

His head jerks and he sacrifices his night vision to look down. It's Jerry, standing at the base of the sandbags and staring up with a closed expression.

"They said you'd been up here for twelve hours!" He has to shout to make his voice heard over the night wind.

Joel settles his hands over the rifle. "Folks had to cover for me while I was locked up," he explains, his voice neutral, but meant to carry, "Had to pay 'em back."

"Mind if I come up?"

"It's your wall. I just live here."

He clambers up the sandbags until they're close enough to talk without raising their voices. Anderson pulls his arms around his knees as he perches on the top of the makeshift wall. Jerry's face is pensive. "I finished analyzing the data from the calorie restriction trial. You were right - it did nothing to the infection."

Joel merely grunts.

Anderson glances at him, evaluating. "I should've been a lot more honest with you from the start." He draws a slow breath. Joel gets the sense that he's being tested - that Anderson is carefully feeling out his limits. A day ago, that would've made him angry. "There've always been two theories when it comes to Ellie's immunity. Either there's something special about her immune system that lets her keep the infection in check . . . or there's some fundamental change in her infection - in the Cordyceps in her brain - that keeps it acting as a symbiote. That makes it _not want_ to spread."

Joel stays silent. His eyes just keep scanning the darkness, mechanically.

"I was really hoping it would be her immune system. Immune responses are complicated, but we can investigate them safely. That might've let us work out a treatment based on her blood or bone marrow. But, after the calorie restriction trial . . . we're ready to move on from that theory. It weakened her immune system just a little - that was the whole point. If she was keeping the Cordyceps in check, we'd have seen a rise in her serum antigen titers. Maybe even increased fungal activity on PET scans."

Joel's hands tighten on his rifle. He greets the knowledge that Anderson intentionally set out to _weaken_ Ellie with the same weary resignation that he has for everything he can't change.

"So, we need to change tactics and focus on the Cordyceps instead. That's . . . technically less complicated. Actually, it's totally feasible. If we can get a sample of the mutated symbiotic Cordyceps, we can test it on a live subject and see if it leads to the same kind of benign fungal growth that Ellie has. If it does, it's just a matter of harvesting enough that we can start inoculating people. Like smallpox. We could have a viable vaccine in a couple of months. Think about that, Joel. Hundreds of immune soldiers moving into the worst-hit areas to start cleaning them out. Vaccination rings around the hotspots. Whole communities not having to live in fear."

Joel is too caught up on that word "harvesting" to pay much attention to Anderson's little utopia. "So, why haven't you done it yet?" He asks finally. "You said she sheds spores in her blood. You started culturing them months ago."

"And I've done everything I can to learn from those cultures, but you can't grow Cordyceps in a lab just off of blood samples. Not even if you use a human test subject as a host. The spores are immature. They bud, and then they die without reaching their next life cycle stage. That's why she can't infect someone, even with prolonged contact. Only the adult fungus can pass the infection along." Anderson hesitates. "So, we need a sample of that."

Joel's blood freezes. "But, the only place it grows is her brain."

"Yeah. Left parietal lobe, to be precise."

His knuckles turn white. "No." The word was meant to be angry and firm, but it comes out soft. Almost pleading.

"Hey, don't panic! It's not as bad as what you're thinking."

Joel waits.

Jerry hesitates, then plunges on. "Think of it like a brain tumor. That's basically what it is, only it's fungus instead of cancer. It's pushing the healthy parts of her brain to the side, but there's enough redundant tissue that she's compensated. Brains are more resilient than people give them credit for. What we need is basically a biopsy. It's not without risk - we'd have to drill a small hole in her skull and use a needle to get a sample. But, neurosurgeons used to do more complicated procedures than that all the time without problems."

"On people who were _sick_ ," Joel says, but there's still no heat in his voice. He's trying to process and mostly failing. "They didn't do brain surgery on a healthy kid."

"Joel . . . this could be the last thing we need from her. Yes, it'll take her a couple weeks for her skull to heal. Yes, there are risks. But think about it: once we have her Cordyceps strain, there's no more need for her to be involved in the studies. She could walk out of that room in a couple weeks and go wherever she wanted. She'd have the rest of her life ahead of her, and _we'd_ have the cure."

Joel closes his eyes. "You're not askin' for my permission. You've made it clear you don't need that."

"I'm asking you to get on board. It's a rough surgery. She'll need you."

"And _you'll_ need her cooperation. Or, at least, you want it."

"I want you to not make this any harder on her. She doesn't need doubts and what-ifs - she needs hope. And if you can't give her that, I'm asking that you walk away now. We could get you safely out of the city. And, you know Marlene will look after her."

Joel shakes his head. He feels sick and he's more tired than he's been in his life, but at least the decisions are easy. Seeing them play out, maybe not so much. "I promised her I wasn't going anywhere. Can't go back on that now."

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback and concrit is always appreciated.


	7. Risks and Complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are no guarantees, no matter how much Joel wants them.

Ellie is fidgeting. Joel can't see her face - her whole head is swallowed up in the jaws of the imaging tube - but her fingers drum out rhythm after rhythm on the white plastic table or tug and toy with her hospital gown or meet across her body to twiddle. For the fourth time, she starts humming, the little ditty almost lost in the whirs and clicks of the PET scanner. 

Jerry huffs a sigh and stabs the intercom button. "Ellie, we're studying your speech centers. Every time you start singing, we have to restart the scan."

She falls silent and switches to drumming her knuckles on the plastic. Anderson's teeth grind. He's on edge, and it's putting Marlene and Joel even more on edge. The surgery is scheduled for the next day. Joel still can't look at Marlene ever since she gave her consent for it, but at least she's showing up for the pre-op appointments.

Ellie starts whistling. It's one of the tunes Joel taught her for the guitar, or at least it's trying to be. Anderson rolls his eyes, looks at Joel, and waves his hand as if to say _do something._ Joel sighs and presses the intercom button. "Ellie, it's been a long day and we're almost done. How about you buckle down so we can finish the test and get you out of that thing?"

The whistling cuts off. "Sorry!" Ellie calls out.

"Restart the scan," Jerry tells a technician, "And let's maybe check her for ADHD while we're at it."

Joel gives him a look. "She does fine when she's not cooped up in a twelve-by-twelve room twenty-four seven." His voice isn't as sharp as it would have been a week ago. Jerry shrugs off the implicit criticism.

"Well, here's to freeing Ellie, then," he says.

"I'll drink to that," Marlene says tersely.

Ellie is tugging on her last two fingers so hard Joel is afraid she's going to pop them off, but she stays silent. After five minutes that feel much longer, the technician looks up at Dr. Anderson and nods. "We're good."

The scanner cuts off. Jerry touches the intercom button. "Okay, we're done. Let's get you out of there."

Joel is the first through the door once the overhead warning light cuts out and it unlocks. The padded tray holding Ellie is rolling back out of the machine, but she can only stare at the ceiling, her head immobilized in a brace. "Sorry!" she says, "I didn't mean to mess up the scans."

"You did fine," Joel tells her, "Now, let's get you out of that contraption." Before Mia and Nancy have made it into the room, he's released the straps of the brace and is helping her to sit up. She wavers a little and holds her stomach for a moment. "You okay, Ellie?"

"Yeah," she nods sharply, "Just a little nauseous all of the sudden."

"That's from the contrast media we gave you," Anderson says from his place near the door. He jerks his head. "When you two are ready, let's chat in my office. We need to go over the plan for tomorrow."

Joel looks around, planning to invite Marlene, but she's already gone. He turns his attention back to Ellie. She's a little woozy, whether from the contrast-whatever or from lying on her back in a noisy metal tube for two hours, he's not sure. It takes her a few tries and a few minutes before she's able to stand and support herself. She stubbornly refuses Nurse Mia's offer of a wheelchair, so Joel stays close, almost but not quite touching her. 

It's a short walk down the hallway to the space that Anderson long ago claimed for his projects and research. It's cluttered with battered medical books and binders stuffed to bursting with reports and graphs. An antique computer - pre-outbreak vintage - hums in the corner. Anderson's desk is littered with papers and manila envelopes. But here, too, they find the first hints of personal effects from the doctor: a large zebra poster pinned to the far wall, an old baseball bearing an illegible signature, a framed photo of a scowling toddler who must be Abby, swathed in a frilly pink dress.

There's a couch and a few chairs arranged in front of the desk, all equally covered with boxes of files. Joel moves a few of the boxes to make space on the couch to sit. Ellie tucks in close beside him. Neither of them speaks.

Anderson sits down across from them and brushes aside a few of his reports. "Okay. Let's talk about the plan. I think plans make things less scary." He looks at Ellie. "Morning meds are at six AM. The surgery starts at ten, which means we'll need to start prepping around nine. No breakfast tomorrow and no fluids after midnight because of the anesthesia. Sorry."

Ellie shrugs. "No biggie."

Joel settles an arm around her. "We'll have cake after. Spotted this old grocery store a few blocks south. Bet they've still got cake mix."

She laughs and shoves at his arm. "Dude, do not fucking die because you wanted to make me a 'good job on your brain surgery' cake."

Joel just smiles. "Cake."

Anderson clears his throat. "Ah, _eventually_ you can have cake. We'll need to be very careful about your food intake over the first couple of days - just until we're sure you can swallow without problems. That'll probably mean a liquid diet. Maybe a feeding tube."

"So, Joel has time to negotiate with the clickers over twenty-year-old Betty Crocker. Got it."

"Anyway . . ." Jerry pulls a large, orange pill vial out of his desk drawer, "New medication. Phenobarbital. It's to prevent seizures. You'll feel a little sleepy on it for the first little while, and it might make you more thirsty."

She picks it up and reads the label. "How long do I have to be on it?"

"As long as you don't have any seizures, we'll taper it after a couple of weeks."

She nods and pockets it without glancing at Joel.

"Now, let's talk about the procedure. Ellie, have you ever been under general anesthesia before?"

She shakes her head. "Doctors in Boston were about as common as zebras."

"Well, it's nothing to be scared of. You'll be asleep for the entire procedure. The nurse will have you breathe some gas while counting backwards, and the next thing you know, it'll be over." He pulls out a plastic model of a skull and sets it on the edge of the desk. Ellie leans forward for a closer look. He points to a spot over the left side of the skull. "We'll make a small skin incision here, then make a burr hole. That's a very small hole drilled through the skull. After surgery, you'll have a couple of sutures in your scalp and a soft spot on your head that'll take a few weeks for the bone to fill in. Don't pick at it."

"Will you have to shave my head?"

"Only a tiny spot. Shouldn't be noticeable with your hair down."

"That's too bad. I always kind of thought I'd look like a badass with a shaved head."

Jerry glances at her as if he's not quite sure if she's joking. He moves on. "We need to get a sample of the fungus with a biopsy needle. That's a long needle . . ." he holds up a pen to the skull to demonstrate, "which goes through the brain and then releases," he clicks the pen, "to collect a sample. We remove the needle, stitch up your scalp, and that's it."

Joel grinds his teeth. "If you get the right spot. Forgive me, doc, but this kind of sounds like fishing blind for one particular seed in a watermelon."

Ellie snorts at the comparison.

"We won't be blind. We'll be using fluoroscopy - that's . . . like a continuous, moving x-ray - to guide the needle placement."

"Cool. Sounds futuristic." She looks at Joel. "You're gonna have to tell me what that thing actually looks like."

Anderson clears his throat. "Actually, Joel can't be in the room for this one."

"What? Why not?"

"It's a tricky procedure. We need complete sterility. Having more people in the OR will just complicate things."

"He's worried I'll sneeze on your brains and not cover my nose," Joel tells Ellie in a conspiratorial tone.

She looks at him with a little anxiety creeping through her shields. "Joel . . ."

"Hey, it's nothing to worry about. They can't keep me out of the recovery room. I'll be there when you go to sleep and I'll be there when you wake up. You won't even know I'm gone."

She swallows and nods, still brave. She looks back at Anderson. "And after the surgery?"

"You'll have a headache. We'll have you on pain medication - the good stuff - for the first couple of days. Hope is to have you back on solid food within twenty-four hours and off of all injectable medications within three days. Strict bed rest until then, and after we'll gradually get you back on your feet."

She glances down and draws a slow breath, looking much older than not-quite-fifteen. Joel squeezes her shoulder, but she doesn't look at him. "Okay. Let's do this."

Poorly concealed relief washes over Anderson's face at her lack of objection. He nods. "If you go see Nancy, she'll draw up your final pre-op lab work."

Ellie stands and turns to Joel, but he shakes his head. "You go on and get your tests done. I'll catch up with you before bedtime."

She bites her lip, but nods. "I'll see you later, then."

In her wake, Joel's shoulders slump. His face sags and his spine curls as he bends to drop his forehead to his hands, elbows on his knees.

"Joel? Are you okay?" Anderson's voice is worried.

Joel shakes his head - not a denial so much as shaking off the concern.

Jerry hesitates. "You're good with her," he says at last, "You kept her mind off of the scary stuff and kept her focused on the future. That's what she needed from you."

Joel lifts his head. He knows his face is drawn and haggard, and he doesn't care. "What happens if she does have seizures?"

"Sorry?"

"If the pheno-whatever doesn't work. She could have a seizure from the surgery. What then?"

"We have medications for that. Odds are, any problems would go away within a couple of weeks."

"And if they don't?"

"It's . . . possible that she could have a long-term seizure problem. Again, we have medications to treat that."

" _Long-term seizure problem_?"

"Like epilepsy. Some people just . . . have seizures every once in a while. It's not that dangerous."

"Maybe before the outbreak. Not anymore. How's she supposed to survive out there with epilepsy? It'd never be safe for her to travel."

"You never know. It might be very safe. Especially after we _cure Cordyceps_ with what we learn from her."

Joel closes his eyes. "Yeah. _Cure Cordyceps._ "

"Joel, I know this is scary for you -"

"What's the worst case scenario?"

Anderson's brow furrows. "What?"

"You only told her about what you _expect_ to happen. There's risks. Complications. What are the worst ones? Could she die from this?"

Jerry pauses for long moments. "It's extremely unlikely." At the look on Joel's face, he holds his hands up defensively. "Hey, there are no guarantees in medicine! 'Extremely unlikely' is the closest we ever get to a 'no.' But, yes, there's a chance she could die under anesthesia or have an anaphylactic reaction to one of the drugs. Sometimes the brain swells for no reason we can determine. If that happens, we might need to drill more burr holes. If that doesn't work, we can still do a craniotomy to relieve the pressure."

The worlds are flying past Joel like blurred cars on the highway. He shakes his head to clear it. "Tell me _what could happen._ Not this doctor-bullshit. What are you scared of? Because, this _does_ scare you. I can tell."

After a long pause, Jerry sighs and turns to his computer monitor, gesturing for Joel to come close. Joel stands and stares over his shoulder as he pulls up a 3D model of the brain, colored with a shifting kaleidoscope of reds, greens, and purples. "This is from the PET scans we did today. From the speech studies." He freezes the image at a particular moment and points to an area in the left side of the brain, towards the front, lighting up highlighter-yellow. "Broca's Area." He clicks forward a few frames and points to another area, seemingly a few inches behind it. "Wernicke's Area. Between them, they control speech. Any damage to either of these areas, and the patient is either unable to get words out or completely unable to understand language. And, between them . . ." He clicks a button and a tumor-like lump materializes, glowing purple. "Her Cordyceps growth. We'll have to thread the needle between them and hope we don't cause a bleeder. And at the growth . . ." He hits another key and the brain turns translucent. At the base of the Cordyceps growth, a faint red tube curls like a python. "The internal carotid artery. The Cordyceps infection somehow altered its normal course. It's feeding the fungus. Hitting it . . . would be bad."

He closes out of the imaging program but continues to stare, sightlessly, at the blank desktop screen. He has the look of a man in the confessional booth. "That's the worst case scenario. We hit the carotid, she could have severe bleeding causing massive brain damage. Maybe a craniotomy would be enough to give her a chance to recover, maybe not. We hit the speech centers, she could be permanently disabled. That's worst case, and it scares the _fuck_ out of me. That's why I'm doing everything in my power to keep that from happening."

Joel takes a moment to absorb that. He walks back to the couch and sits down heavily. Anderson waits, silently. At long last, Joel looks at him. "Tell me that this is the only option."

Jerry hesitates for a long moment. "It's the best of several bad options," he says at last.

Joel looks away. There's no fighting this - not unless he wants them to take Ellie away from him for good. He stands and heads for the door. "Glad we had this talk, doc."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

"Okay, hold still a minute longer."

Ellie is already dressed for sleep in a loose-fitting tee shirt and trunks. Her auburn locks are so silky they almost slip through Joel's fingers. He gathers a few more strands up towards the crown of her head and sets to weaving them together. It's been a long time, but muscle memory kicks in. Sarah gave him plenty of practice at French braiding before she turned eleven and decided long hair was too much trouble. He braids a long track, like a railroad, along the top of her head, tucking most of her hair out of the way. His fingers slide down to her temple, and he gathers more locks - these much finer and more wispy - and gathers them into a braid as well. In between, he leaves a two inch section of untouched hair. He gives the loose strands a gentle tug. "This'll be your bald spot."

Ellie's lip twists. "Still not as cool as a shaved head."

"We are _not_ shaving your head just so you can look cool."

She's not quite ready for sleep. Joel leans back against the white incline of her bed and she tucks herself against his side. He drops his voice to a whisper. He's always halfway paranoid that Marlene or Jerry might have secret microphones in here. "You know you don't have to do this."

She leans her head against his shoulder. The crude braids make her look like a Viking shield maiden. "Yes, I do."

"Look . . . If you don't want to . . . If you're ready to be done? You can be done. I'll make it happen. Shouldn't be Anderson's decision, or Marlene's, or anyone else's."

"You're right. It's my decision. And, I can do this." She looks up at him and smiles, though it's a little shaky. "C'mon. I'm saving the world. Surely, you're not gonna deny a kid a chance to save the world?"

Joel closes his eyes. "At what price, though?"

She tenses a little in his arms. "You mean, 'what if Ellie becomes a blithering idiot?'" His eyes pop open and she holds out her hands to forestall any confrontation. "Yeah, I know about the risk to my speech centers, or whatever he called them. Dr. Anderson came to talk to me yesterday. He talked about all the possible complications. Guess he talked to you, too."

"Ellie . . ."

"Stop. It's okay. It's risky. I know that. I still want to do it."

"Ellie, what if this goes wrong?"

"I . . . I don't know." She's staring at the ceiling. "If something happened, if I ended up brain damaged . . . I honestly don't know what I'd want to happen next. But, I think I'd want to keep fighting. If I could. Even if I couldn't understand it anymore." She looks at him. "I had this friend . . . she'd tell me to fight. For every minute of life I could get. Even if it hurts. Even if it's never gonna be like it was." Her eyes cloud. "But, sometimes? I feel like maybe that's being selfish. Like, you shouldn't have to deal with that. You shouldn't have to sit around staring at this husk that used to be Ellie if . . ."

"Hey, stop! Stop it!" She falls silent. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. "You don't need to be talking like that. Hell, you don't need to be _thinking_ like that, I shouldn't have asked. You're gonna be fine."

"Yeah . . . Yeah, I know." She looks at him. "I'd still want to do it. Even if I wasn't gonna be fine."

He swallows past the knives in his throat. The only thing that keeps him going - that keeps him from snatching her up and running for the exit and fuck anyone that gets in his way - is the chance that this might be the last thing they need from her. One more surgery. One more unacknowledged act of courage, and maybe that'll be enough. The damn Fireflies will have what they want. And, Ellie can . . . just be.

"I know," he whispers, "You're stubborn like that."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

"Okay, Ellie, I want you to count back from ten." Nurse Mia holds a clear plastic mask against her face. Ellie breathes deep.

"Ten . . . nine . . . . . . eight . . . . . . . se . . .ven . . ."

Her hand goes slack in Joel's. He gives the nurse a questioning look. She nods. "She's responding normally. We'll take good care of her. You should go."

Joel swallows past razor blades and nods. As he steps to the door, he tries not to notice the electric buzz of clippers. He doesn't turn back to watch her hair float to the floor.

The hallway is empty. There's no one to see Joel sag against the wall. He lifts two trembling fingers to his temple, but there's no rubbing away this tension. God, if something goes wrong . . .

He pushes the thought away. Anderson knows his business. She'll be fine. And then it'll be done and they won't need her anymore . . .

Joel needs it to be done.

The light, determined click of footsteps announces an end to his moment of solitude. Joel opens eyes he doesn't remember closing. He folds his arms across his chest and scowls. Marlene is undeterred. She leans against the wall beside him, thumbs hooked in her pockets, a gesture that looks far too studiously casual.

"Y'know," she says quietly, "They make some pretty good hooch down on the sub levels. Command turns a blind eye to it, and we get repaid handsomely. What do you say we go collect a little hush-booze?"

Joel snorts. "At ten o'clock in the morning?"

"It's not exactly a normal day."

"It's just one more procedure. She's had a dozen already. No reason to make it any more than that."

"I get that. I do. I'm just saying . . . might be better to wait with somebody."

"And you've got all the time in the world, huh?" He watches her flatly. "Where was all of that moral support a couple hours ago, when Ellie could still have visitors? How come she ain't barely seen you in weeks?"

Her expression is suddenly guarded. "It's complicated."

"What's so complicated about sayin' a few words to a scared kid?"

"Look, Joel, you're not the only one this is hard on!"

"Aw, don't give me that crap! The Anderson girl showed up, an' she's just a kid herself. You telling me that teenager is just tougher than you?"

"If you don't want the drink, suit yourself! And I guess fuck me for showing a little human concern. But, you ought to spend the hours with _somebody._ "

He's shaking his head, his lips curled in a bitter twist. He straightens. "We've got at least four hours. Might as well get some work done. There's a cache I can hit down at the Whole Foods. I can be there and back, two and a half hours, easy."

Her eyebrows shoot up, but he's already moving past her. "Seriously, Joel? You're going outside the wall?"

"I go outside the wall five days out of the week."

She falls in beside him. "Pick one of the other days, then! I don't think you're in any state of mind to be tangling with infected."

"My _mind_ is fine. Ain't nothing stopping me from doing my job today."

"Fine! Do what you've gotta do. But, Joel? Take a minute to think about what happens if she wakes up and you're not there."

Joel leaves without a word.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long hiatus. There should be another update tomorrow. In the meantime, all feedback is cherished.


	8. Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel demonstrates spectacularly bad coping skills but remembers what's important. Jerry might be saving the world or he might be losing his way, and no one is really in a position to judge.

The air always feels fresher outside a Quarantine Zone. Joel rolls his shoulders as he walks, shaking out the tightness. A late summer storm is blowing through, drumming the shoulders of his coat with fat rain drops and plastering his hair to his scalp in moments. A boom of thunder rolls over him and rattles the nearby windows. It's good scavenging weather; the sound of the storm confuses the clickers and leaves them vulnerable.

Like that one up ahead, for example. From the husk of a bank, something that used to be a man emerges, its fungal-plated head rocking and clicking. It doesn't "see" him, though. He lets his pipe drop into his hand, takes a few running steps, and then swings it into the side of the thing's face. It screams as it dies . . .

Wait, no, clickers don't scream like that. His head snaps up and he jumps back just as two screaming runners charge out the door in its wake. One trips over the clicker's body, but the other is on top of Joel, snapping and clawing, and the pipe is still stuck in the damn clicker's throat. Joel knocks the runner back with a right hook, grabs his revolver, and buries three shots in its chest. The other one, too, is just three feet away and quickly recovering. His next two shots whistle past its ear, but his last bullet gets it right in the eye, dropping it.

No time to stop and think. The gunshots will have drawn others. He snaps the pipe out of the clicker's neck, leaving behind the spikes he'd bound to it. He takes off down the street at a run, his feet kicking up puddles, not stopping until he reaches a sheltered alley half a block away. There he pauses, panting, and peers out from behind a rusted dumpster. Yeah, he's kicked the anthill now. A dozen or so infected have poured out into the street and are milling about. Their alarm cries are drawing more, but they don't seem to have seen him. Joel backs down the alleyway and hops a chain link fence. He can detour around them, though it'll take him down streets he's not quite as familiar with.

He jogs the next few blocks, but pauses to shiv two runners that were lurking by an old McDonalds drive through. No reason to risk them blindsiding him on his way back. The rain is lightening, but the wind is picking up, catching at his soaked clothes. There's something freeing about being out here with no one's back to watch but his own, breathing in the ozone-laced air of the storm rather than the sharp sterility of the operating room. Still, he's on the clock. He cuts into an old shopping center that runs the length of the next building over. 

He barely glances at the dark maws of abandoned shops - all of these stores were cleared by the Fireflies or other scavengers long ago. Most of the skylights in the food court are broken, and rain streams through to settle in dirty puddles on the cracked tile. Joel's mind is already on the grocery store. The mess hall is nearly out of salt and sugar. He can restock that and grab a few cans, maybe scout the other aisles a little . . .

A flash of movement in an old jewelry store catches his eye and his face hardens. Damn stalkers. They'll make a nuisance of themselves sooner or later, so he might as well deal with them now. He reloads his revolver, holsters it, and settles his grip on the pipe. He lets himself pretend that he's just doing what he's got to do - that his blood ain't quickening at the thought of a fight.

He jumps through a shattered store window and finds two stalkers huddling behind the display cases. The closest one looks like it might've been a woman once. He swings the pipe down on its head once and a bit of blood splashes out, twice and he can feel the bones of its skull starting to crack, three times and the dead skin splits open and brains splatter in all directions. The other one lunges at him and snaps his head around with a hard blow, but he jams the butt of the pipe into its gut, then swings up between its legs. He has no idea if stalkers still have . . . anything down there, but this one screams and rocks back, which gives him plenty of opportunity to crack the pipe across its face, breaking its neck.

He doesn't even have time to catch his breath before he hears the telltale clicking. As soon as it reaches his ears, he vaults over the nearest counter and drops into cover, but it's too late. A clicker charges around the corner. He breaks the pipe across its face, but all that does is drop it back for a half a second. It lunges at him again and he has to jump back. The window behind him still holds a lot of shattered glass, but gashing himself on that is better than staying put and getting gnawed on by a clicker. He throws himself backwards into the corridor outside, feeling glass shatter around him and lodge in his thigh. He lands on his back and skids across the uneven tile, pulling out his revolver. Three bullets catch the stalker in the neck just as it springs through the window. It's dead before it hits the ground.

That's two fuck ups in one day. Joel growls and pushes himself to his feet, but he knows he won't be quite as lucky in his escape this time. He can already hear the clicking - can see three or four more infected emerging from the ruins of stores ahead. Maybe if he books it back the way he came . . . but, no, he'd have to detour an extra couple of blocks just to get to the far side of the street. Besides, this building was cleared just a couple weeks ago. There can't be that many of them.

He puts his revolver away and swings his rifle down from his shoulder, thankful that the Fireflies at least provide him with a good stock of ammo. He hops up on one of the food court tables just to give himself a bit more of a vantage point and sights the first infected. The BANG of the rifle rings out far louder than his revolver had, and the clicker crumples to the ground. He takes down the next, and the next, but they're too close now, and charging at him. He drops the rifle, grabs his shotgun, and blows off two runners' heads in quick succession. There's almost a dozen more charging toward him, though, and this corridor is a shooting gallery, but if he doesn't do something to even the odds, it's gonna turn into a charnel house.

There are two Molotovs tucked in his pack for emergencies. Joel decides this qualifies. He grabs one, lights the wick, and pitches it at the largest clump of infected. Three of them get taken out in the initial spray of flame, and one of the burning clickers plows into a runner, lighting it on fire as well. Their screams echo against tile floors and concrete walls, confusing the other clickers. Joel hops down off the table and retreats a few steps. The survivors keep stumbling towards him. Mindless idiots. He picks off one, then another, then a third. Only a clicker and two runners get close enough to make it interesting. 

The clicker grabs him by the shoulder and tries to haul him in, but he uses its momentum against it and buries a shiv in its neck. That's not quite enough to drop it, so he finishes the thing with a shotgun blast to the chest. A runner knocks him to the ground, but he drives up with the butt of his shotgun once, twice, a third time and its jaw rips halfway off its face and it drops with a croaking scream. His next shot catches the last runner in the thigh, turning its leg into so much pulverized meat. It crumples to the ground even as he rolls to his feet. Shockwaves travel up his leg as he stomps on it, but with the second stomp, its skull splits like an overripe melon. Stupid bastards, for thinking they can stop him . . .

A stinging pain catches him in his left side and the air around him explodes with a yellow mist that sears his lungs. He staggers away, coughing, and takes shelter behind an overturned table. From down the corridor, he hears a roar and the slow thud of heavy feet. 

Bloater. After all this, a fucking bloater.

His face hardens. Well, he's taken out plenty of its kind, and this ought to be no different. It can't fucking stop him. He pops out of cover, sights down the rifle, and unloads a shot into its swollen head. The bullet barely rocks the bloater, but its answering spore bomb catches Joel square in the chest, knocking him back and making him cough until he's sure his ribs will crack. He rolls to his feet, stumbles to take cover behind a corner, and grabs his last Molotov from his pack.

He's a moment from lighting it when another coughing fit doubles him over, and this time he thinks his rib _does_ crack. The pain is piercing for a moment. Blinding. And in its wake, it leaves clarity.

_"What happens if she wakes up and you're not there?"_

What the fuck is he doing? He can't take out a bloater with one Molotov, and even if he could, he'd only be drawing more of 'em. Why the hell is he risking it all over some dumbass scavenging run to a grocery store? Even if . . . no. It ain't worth it. The infected are an enemy he can fight, but that don't mean he can win.

Bloaters are slow. This one will never catch up with him. He puts the Molotov away and sprints back the way he came, not pausing until he emerges into the rain, bruised and battered, empty-handed, but alive.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Blue stitches stand out like bruises against the pale white of Ellie's scalp. Joel can't tear his eyes away from the little half-moon incision. The braids above and below look dried and stiff - a consequence of the chemicals they used to scrub, one of the nurses told him.

Joel sits on a stool by her side, her hand enveloped in his. Her face is still. It's been nearly an hour since they rolled her out of the operating room, forty-five minutes since a nurse removed the breathing tube and declared that she was recovering normally, and she's still not awake. Joel had intended to charge straight up here the moment his Cordyceps test flashed negative at the gate, but he'd been waylaid by Mia and Nancy, who'd informed him in no uncertain terms that he was not going into their clean room in bloody clothes reeking from spore bombs and smeared with bits of infected. They hadn't quite been able to force him into the showers or onto their exam table to have his wounds stitched, but he'd washed his hands, arms, and face, allowed them to pick the broken glass out of his leg and slap a bandage over it, and redress him in blue scrubs.

Now, it's looking like they needn't have hurried. Ellie was tossing and turning a little while ago and seemed to be trying to mumble something, but her eyes still haven't opened, and she's lapsed back into a deep sleep.

Joel lifts his eyes, trying to keep the panic out of them. "Shouldn't she be waking up by now?"

Jerry sits on the other side of the bed, scribbling notes in a thick manila folder that Joel recognizes as Ellie's medical record. He glances at the blinking screens behind the bed - EKG, pulse ox, EEG, and other monitors Joel can't begin to recognize. "She's stable. It was a big procedure. She just needs a little more time."

Joel nods shortly and drops his head. God, if something went wrong . . .

Her brow furrows. She slowly turns her head to the side and groans blearily. Her eyes crack - first one, then the other.

Joel squeezes her hand. "Ellie? Can you hear me, baby girl?"

Jerry is standing, his notes set aside. He lays one hand on Ellie's shoulder and uses the other to check the pulse in her wrist. "She's disoriented. Try not to rush her."

Joel nods and tries to force his pounding heart to slow. "Ellie . . ." he whispers, "You're okay, kiddo. You had a big procedure, but you're okay now. You wake up when you're good and ready okay?"

Her eyelids flutter and start to slowly track across the room. Her eyes catch on Joel and stick for a minute.

"Ellie?"

Her left hand twitches in his. Her right arm swings up towards her head. Jerry catches it and pushes it back down. "Take it easy, Ellie. I know it's sore, but don't touch your incision."

She blinks a few times, her head rocking back and forth.

"You're alright. It's all gonna be okay."

She opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a broken croak. Almost a click.

"Here," Jerry lifts a plastic cup, "Ice chips."

He slips one between her lips, but she just lies there with her mouth half-open. Joel gently presses her lips together and seals them with a finger. Her throat works slowly as the ice melts. After a minute, she licks her lips, opens her mouth, and coughs. She seems more with it. Her eyes slide slowly from Jerry's face to Joel's. Her fingers tighten on his.

"Ellie," the doctor says cautiously, "Do you think you can say something? Just a word or two, when you're ready."

She blinks and nods - just the slightest incline of her head. She opens her mouth but can't get out more than a muffled groan.

"Take your time. Have a little more ice." Jerry lifts his eyes to Joel's and Joel can see relief there. "Wernicke's Area is intact," he murmurs, as if Joel's supposed to remember what the hell that means. He just nods.

Ellie sucks on her ice chips for another minute. This time, she doesn't need to be reminded to close her mouth. Her eyes are less clouded, and Joel can see her face start to set with determination. Her lips part.

"Ooo . . ." her face creases and she tries again, "Eh . . .ore . . ."

Joel's heart is trying to beat straight out of his chest. He lifts his eyes to Anderson's. "Doc . . ."

"It's okay. It might just be the anesthesia. Give her a minute."

Ellie seems almost winded from the effort. She takes one quick breath, then another. "Ohhh . . ."

"Oh, God . . ."

"Give her a _minute,_ Joel. You're scaring her."

He swallows and forces the fear from his face because if _he's_ scared, it's nothing to how Ellie is feeling. She meets his gaze and nods. Purses her lips and swallows hard. "Oo . . . y- _uh_ . . . Youuu." She takes one more breath and something like triumph flashes in her face. "You . . . you."

"Yeah? What is it, baby girl?" He leans close so she doesn't have to raise her voice.

"You smell . . . like spores. You smell like spores."

The words are rough and hoarse but unmistakable. Relief punches a laugh from his chest. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do."

"Wha' happened?"

"Nothing to worry about. I went out on a run, did something dumb."

She snorts. "Always tryin' to be the fucking hero . . ."

"Y'know, you might be the first person to ever accuse me of that."

She smiles a little, like she's still remembering how. Her eyelids flutter. Anderson peels one back and shines a light briefly in his eye. Whatever he sees seems to reassure him. He nods and stands. "I'll do a full neuro check in an hour. For now, take a little time. Just don't tire her out." He squeezes her shoulder. "You did good, kid."

She beams like it's the best compliment she's gotten in her life, and Joel's relief is suddenly darkened by foreboding. He pushes it away. She's done it. She did everything they wanted. They won't need her anymore. 

They won't.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Joel stares down at the latest subject - the latest volunteer. Cold and pale on a metal slab, with just a sheet covering his lower half. This one looks young. He must've been a kid on Outbreak Day. He might not've even remembered before.

Across the room, Jerry is slumped at a metal counter, dictating into a recorder with a voice that sounds broken. "Within two hours of transdermal inoculation, the subject developed a high grade fever and bullous pemphigoid dermal reaction at the inoculation site. The reaction was progressive, and exceeded Subject Zero's natural dermal response within two hours of the onset of symptoms . . ."

The autopsy is over. The young man's chest has been stitched back together in a Y-shaped pattern. His heart still sits in a metal scale, slowly dripping. On the counter behind Joel, an array of clear plastic bags filled with flesh and bloody fluid show just how little of him is still left inside that stitched-together skin.

" . . . Thirty-four hours after inoculation, the subject stopped responding to verbal stimuli and began showing aggressive reactivity characteristic of prodromal limbic involvement . . ."

He has some early fungal knobs protruding through his forehead, through split skin. One blood-red tendril twines out of his nose. They'll have to cremate him, once the doctor has all of his samples. Can't have him sprouting spores right here in the morgue.

" . . . all physiologic measurements within expected parameters for natural infection throughout the observation period . . ."

Joel belatedly wonders when the last time was that he thought of an infected as a "he" or "she" rather than "it." Probably since Pittsburgh. Sam.

" . . .Time of end stage neural degeneration: zero two fifty-two. Time of euthanasia: zero two fifty-four."

Jerry clicks off the recorder and sets it gently down. He lifts a pen and jots a few more notes on a tin-backed clipboard. Tucks the pen away and stares, unseeing, at the chart for almost a minute. Then, all at once, he springs up from the stool and throws the clipboard across the room. It bounces off a steel cabinet with a metallic _clang_ and falls to the ground, crumpling the pages.

Joel stoops, picks it up, and smoothes out the notes. He sets it on a nearby counter without even trying to read the doctor's chicken scratch. Jerry is panting for breath and staring at Joel like he hadn't realized he was there.

"Marlene told me you were down here." Joel says simply.

Jerry nods and rakes a hand through his hair to straighten it. "She told you." He doesn't mean his location.

"Yeah. After how things were going yesterday, I expected it."

"Did you tell Ellie?"

"Just came from there."

"How _much_ did you tell her?"

Joel presses his lips together. "That it didn't work. That the test subject died. Didn't tell her it was _her_ Cordyceps that killed him. An' I'd appreciate it if you didn't either."

Jerry nods, looking away. "She's a smart kid. She could figure it out if she wants to."

"Maybe she won't want to."

Anderson sighs. He's moving like an old man, though he's younger than Joel. He steps close to the slab and draws the sheet over the young man's ruined face.

Joel lets the false peace reign a second longer. Then, he speaks. "What now?"

"There are . . . other theories. Other avenues we can explore."

"You said there were only two possibilities. Either it's her immune system or it's her Cordyceps that's special." Joel gestures to the dead man. "It ain't her Cordyceps."

"There must be some kind of . . . middle road. Some specific interaction between her immune system and this particular strain . . ."

"Doc! How much longer are you gonna beat this horse?"

"What do you want me to do? Just give up?"

"What the hell are you gettin' by continuing?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe a chance to save humanity!"

"You've had lots of chances! You've _taken_ lots of chances! What the hell do you have to show for it?"

"You're over the line, Joel!" His voice is suddenly icy, and Joel falls silent, the memory of his threats looming large in his mind. Jerry pauses just a moment, waiting to see if he's cowed. "We're not giving up - not yet. I've been working out some contingency plans. Experimental trials."

"Experimenting on _her,_ you mean."

"If there was another way . . ."

"But, there _is._ You can stop. Tell Marlene and all the rest that you're very sorry, but this little kid doesn't have a magic cure in her brain." He pauses. "When's it gonna be enough, Jerry?"

For a moment, the doctor's face wavers. Then he straightens. His face settles into composure. "This is bigger than one child. Too many people have given their lives for this, just for us to turn back when we're this close to a breakthrough. Their sacrifices won't be in vain." Jerry lays his hand gently on the test subject's shoulder. He doesn't even seem aware that he's doing it. He looks Joel square in the eyes. "The tests will go on. I'll talk to Ellie tomorrow. I'll send you some literature on what to expect. I . . . I wish there was another way. But, there isn't."

And Joel wants to scream at him. He wants to do worse. Half of him wants the satisfaction of pummeling Anderson until he's blue and bloody while the other half just wants to snap his neck quick and never again have to be scared of what he'll resort to next. He grinds his teeth and stops himself. If he does _anything_ they'll take Ellie away from him. She'll never know what happened to him; he'll never know what happens to her. It's the only thing worse than what they're going through now. He bows his head in a show of submission.

Jerry steps past him and is halfway out the door before Joel decides that he can't leave it at that. "Y'know," he says, his voice cautious and intense, "You talk a good game about sacrifice. About the greater good. But, it occurs to me that I'm never gonna see Abby down here on one of these slabs."

Jerry spins with fire in his eyes. He seems ready to lunge at him. Joel holds his hands up, placating. "That wasn't a threat, doc. I'm just sayin' . . . you're a father. You've got a daughter of your own. _Think_ about what you're doing."

Jerry's breath hisses out of him. "I do," he whispers, "Every day, I do."

He turns and leaves, silently.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapters are getting trickier as we get closer to the conclusion. Next chap is probably a couple days away. Until then, all reviews are appreciated.


	9. Family Ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jerry's experimentation escalates. Ellie receives a gift. Joel asks for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is finished and will be updated at a chapter a day.
> 
> This part contains spoilers for Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents."
> 
> Also contains much suffering and angst. You've been warned.

Joel barely waits for the scanner to _beep_ negative before pushing past the guards at the gate and breaking into a run. Fireflies up and down the wall tense and start to raise their weapons, probably worried he's trying to outrun a positive test, but a sergeant calms them down. Joel plows through the main entrance, cuts through the morass of people's daily routines, and takes the four flights of stairs two at a time. All the while, he cradles his pack to his chest, trying to keep it from _clinking_.

He reaches Ellie's room and nods shortly to the guards still posted outside. "Let me in."

The older of the two hesitates. "Dr. Anderson said . . ."

"Son, if you know what's good for you, you'll let me in."

Fortunately, Anderson himself notices Joel through the glass and ends the standoff by waving him through. Joel finds the room and its occupants much like they'd been when he left them hours before. Ellie is pale, covered in sweat, and almost senseless with pain. She's clutching her abdomen and rocking in bed while an IV drips yellow-stained fluids through her permanent catheter. The younger nurse - Nancy - stands beside her in a mask, gloves, and full surgical gown, stroking her hair and holding out a plastic basin, reeking of vomit. Ellie heaves again, but gets up nothing but a bit of white foam. Anderson stands on her other side, similarly dressed, checking her pulse and adjusting her EKG leads.

"I got it," Joel says without preamble, "That animal hospital down by the university. Like you said." He rips open his pack and pulls out a square pallet, wrapped in plastic, containing about a hundred tiny glass vials.

"Thank god," Anderson says shortly. He rips open the packaging and holds one of the vials up to the light, squinting at the faded label.

"It's dolasetron." Joel's tongue doesn't slip on the unfamiliar syllables. "Like you said. I wouldn't fuck that up."

Jerry nods and draws half the bottle up into a steel syringe. "It's twenty years expired, but it beats the hell out of nothing." He pushes up Ellie's hospital gown, pinches the skin over her abdomen, and injects. She screams, and Joel is about ready to go _through_ the doctor to get to her, but Mia grabs him from the other side and holds him back. 

"You can't touch her before you're scrubbed," she says, "Her white blood cell count is still too low. If you touch her, you could make her sick."

Joel swallows. "What the hell, doc? You said that drug would _help._ "

"It will," Anderson says steadily, "Stings like a bitch going in, but it'll help. Go clean yourself up, Joel. She'll be feeling better by the time you get back."

Joel wants to stay and fight, but, like most days, there's _nothing he can do_. He lets the nurse nudge him back out the door and down the hall to the showers. At this hour of the day, the men's locker room is abandoned. Joel strips one layer at a time, shedding the black Firefly armband first. His coat is splattered with blood from the five infected he'd had to take down in the vet clinic's lobby. The flannel beneath is soaked in sweat from running in the August sun. He pants raggedly for breath, fighting the aftereffects of adrenaline. 

The water from the rainwater showers is cold today, but that's mostly a blessing given how overheated he is. He sluices sweat and grime and gore off of himself as quickly as possible, using the antiseptic soap the nurse gave him. He's almost caught his breath by the time he towels himself off and dresses in the scrubs Mia left for him. She greets him without comment in the hallway and helps him dress the rest of the way, in a green surgical gown, mask, and gloves.

By the time he gets back to Ellie's room, she's no longer retching and convulsing. She's slumped in bed, eyes closed, panting and shining with sweat, but she no longer seems in danger of puking out her own stomach at any moment. Joel goes to her side, hardly noticing when he pushes Nancy out of the way in his haste. "Ellie?" He lays a hand over hers, but it barely twitches in response.

"She's out," Anderson says wearily, "With the extra anti-nausea medication, we were able to turn her morphine up. It's best if she sleeps through the worst of it."

Joel swallows and stares at the dripping IV. The yellow color bothers him, though Anderson has assured him that it's nothing but saline and vitamin supplements now. Or maybe it's the dripping that's getting to him. Just yesterday, Ellie was lying right here, cracking jokes and telling him not to worry and all the time, that damn IV had been dripping, filling her veins with Anderson's "experimental treatment," flooding her with what turned out to be poison.

"What went wrong?" Joel asks, his voice low but intense.

Anderson's face is cautious. "We don't know that anything did go wrong, yet. Nausea is a known complication of the therapy. Now that we have these other medications, we'll be able to control it." He's pulling another vial from the potpourri of medications Joel had tucked into his pack. This time, the injection goes in Ellie's IV line, and she doesn't react.

Joel scowls. "Then, why the hell didn't you give me your little shopping list two days ago, when it could have prevented this mess?"

"I didn't realize her symptoms would be this bad." Joel rounds on him, but Anderson holds up his hands, his voice placating but firm. "I made a mistake. It won't happen again."

All Joel can do is swallow his rage. He looks for another outlet. "And you're sure this is gonna be enough? Jesus, we're using _animal_ drugs on her."

"They're human drugs. The vets used to get them from us." Anderson is unloading Joel's pack, taking a quick inventory. His face falls a little. "Did you find any of the controlled drugs I mentioned? Hydromorphone, methadone, even buprenorphine?"

Joel shakes his head. "Anything you could get high off of got used or looted ages ago."

"Okay. We'll make due."

"There's a couple more clinics I could try to the south. And the Shriner's hospital . . ."

"That hospital's been overrun by infected practically since Outbreak Day. You'd never get in and out alive."

"If she needs the drugs . . ."

"We'll divert morphine that normally would've gone to wounded operatives. She won't go without."

Ellie winces and grunts without waking. Anderson pushes a button on one of the fluid pumps and her face slackens. Joel stares at his hands. "What the hell are we doing here?"

"It's an early-stage trial. We're trying to use the therapeutic agent to modulate her immune system and study the Cordyceps response. That'll give us an idea of how her body is doing what it's doing, and from there, we can work towards more specific drug therapies."

Joel lets the medical jargon wash over him. Water off of a duck. "What the _hell_ are we doing here?" he repeats.

"Did you read the info packet I gave you?"

Joel glares at him because, yes, he spent over two hours poring over the thick file, written entirely in doctor-speak, that supposedly detailed Anderson's plans. He'd even smuggled a dictionary out of the small, makeshift library on the second floor and looked up every word he didn't recognize only to see that half of them were Greek even to Merriam-Webster. And Anderson knows this, or at least he can guess.

So, he glares, but the look lacks heat because he is _so tired_ of this brittle helplessness - of every day bringing some new horror that he has no way to fight.

Jerry doesn't get angry. His expression is conflicted. Joel wonders if he realizes, on some level, that what he's doing is breaking Ellie, or at the very least breaking Joel. "Look . . . maybe you should take a break from this for a little while? Just until her symptoms aren't as dramatic. I promise you, we're doing everything in our power to keep her comfortable."

Joel shakes his head. "I'm not leaving her."

"Joel . . ."

"I'm _not_. That was the deal, right? I let you try your little mad science, I don't put up a fuss, and you don't take her away from me."

Jerry sighs. "Okay. She'll sleep for a while longer. You can spend a little time. Just don't take your mask off - her condition is still fragile."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Joel enters the clean room the next day and is enormously relieved to see Ellie sitting up in bed. She's pale but not sweating. Her hands are trembling a little, but she's sketching in her notepad. A tube down her nose carries nutrition she hadn't been able to stomach yesterday.

"Hey, kiddo. Feeling better?"

She manages a small smile. "Yeah. Good drugs."

He steps close to the bed but pauses when his eye catches on a book. It's a paperback, and it's lying in a corner with its pages crumpled, as if someone threw it against the wall with some force. He picks it up, smoothes it out, and reads the cover. _The Parable of the Talents._ Something about that rings a bell. He arches an eyebrow at Ellie. "This book do something to you?"

She huffs a sigh. " _No._ " After a half second, though, she rolls her eyes. "Yeah. Kind of."

"Should I give it a good, stern talking-to?"

"Ha ha."

He flips to the back cover, but it's just an _About the Author._ Looks like she died a couple years before the outbreak. Good for her. "This is one of the ones Abby loaned you, right?"

"Yeah. It's the sequel to the one I told you about. _Parable of the Sower_."

"Not what you were hoping for?"

That's all it takes to open the floodgates. "No, and it's so fucking _stupid._ The last one was dark, but this one's just _hopeless._ So, they make it to northern California in the first one, right? And a bunch of people died along the way, but it's okay because they're gonna build their own settlement and be safe and maybe someday make it to the stars. And they were _doing_ it, but this book just throws all of that out the window. As soon as they start trying to build, these crazy people attack them for no reason and burn everything down and take them all prisoner. And they get away in the end, but the main girl loses her brother and her husband and even her daughter gets taken away and . . ." She trails off and shrugs. "I just got tired of seeing them miserable."

Joel rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, well . . . end of the world stories tend to be pretty grim. All the same, you shouldn't be damaging a book that ain't yours."

She huffs. "Sorry."

He tucks it under another half dozen books on her bedside table, so that the hard covers will press the bent pages flat. "Did you get to the end?"

"No. I kind of gave up."

"Maybe you should. You never know. She might still make it to those stars."

She sighs. "Maybe."

He sits down by her bedside. "How _are_ you feeling."

"Better," she says quickly, "A lot better. Dr. Anderson says I can try some solid food tonight."

"Yesterday sucked."

"Yeah, but he says the first treatment is the worst. The rest shouldn't be bad, and there's only three more scheduled." She pauses and smiles. "Besides, it was worth it. Marlene came by this morning. Check out what she got me."

From under her loose-fitting tank top, Ellie pulls out a small silver chain. Joel feels his chest tighten with foreboding. She pulls the pendant from her neck and holds it out so he can see. On one side, the Firefly emblem stands out, all sharp angles. After a moment, she flips it so he can read the other side.

_Ellie Miller._

She misses the look on his face. She's running the chain between her finger and thumb. "Marlene says my mom's name was _Williams._ She wanted to put that on the pendant. But, I convinced her to do this instead."

"Give me that." His voice is harsh and rough. She looks up, confused, but holds it out for him. He snatches it and stuffs it deep in his pocket, without looking at it.

The confusion turns to hurt. She seems close to crying, but she makes her face harden and forces a scowl instead. "Look, Joel, if you don't want me using your name, you could just say so. You don't have to be a dick about it."

"It ain't that." Joel's eyes are squeezed shut. Then, he opens them, looks at her, and realizes how badly he's fucked up. He sighs. "It ain't that. Ellie . . ." He reaches out to touch her shoulder, but she twitches away, angry. "Ellie, listen to me . . . You're family. Of course you can be a Miller if you want to be, though I'm not gonna leave you much of an inheritance. But, you ain't a Firefly."

"Joel . . ."

"No. Look, these people oughta be thanking you _on bended knee_ for what you're doing here. Not giving you little pats on the head while they try and recruit you into their little crusade."

"And what if I believe in their crusade?"

"You can believe all you want, but once you put on that pendant, they own you. You're one more foot soldier in their war, and most of those soldiers have ended up dead. You ain't seen what I've seen, girl. You're not joining them."

" _You_ joined them!"

"That's different. I did that to keep you safe. And lord knows I'm old enough to make my own decisions."

"Yeah, well so am I!"

"You're _not._ I know you think you're all grown up, but, Jesus Christ, Ellie, you're fourteen!"

"I'm _fifteen_."

The sharpness in her voice stops him.

She swallows. Shrugs. "It was my birthday. Yesterday. That's why Marlene brought the pendant. It was my birthday present."

Joel stares at her for a moment, then sighs and sags in his chair. "Why the hell didn't you say anything?"

"I had a treatment scheduled. Dr. Anderson warned me it was gonna get rough, and I knew you'd pitch a stink. And I want it to be _done._ "

Joel stands and paces. "I'd have gotten you something."

"You broke into an overrun clinic, killed god-knows how many infected along the way, and brought back the medicine that got my symptoms under control, and you did it in _two hours_. I think you're off the hook for presents this year."

Joel rakes his hands through his hair. He returns to her side. "Ellie . . . we're gonna have presents. And cake and a fucking party, but that's for when all this is _done._ And it _will_ be done, sooner or later. This ain't gonna be your whole life."

She blinks a few times, turns away, and nods. She forgives so easily. It scares him, sometimes. She gestures towards her guitar. "C'mon. Teach me something. I've almost got that one chord down."

He nods and settles the guitar in her hands and walks her through some chord progressions. But, the whole time, the pendant sits heavily in his pocket, a weight he can't ignore.

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The next three treatments aren't as bad, but when they're over, Anderson announces that they'll have to do another round. Even with the feeding tube, Ellie is losing weight - fast. Within two weeks of her birthday, she's thinner than she was in Colorado. Her white blood cell count is up and down. Most days, Joel has to wear full mask and gloves to be around her. Some days he can't touch her at all. What scares him the most, though, is when her hair starts to fall out. She tries to hide it by pulling it back into ponytails. She tucks her hairbrush under her mattress so he won't see the big clumps that cling to it each morning. Still, he finds long strands - once russet-brown, now dull and lank - on her pillow and her sheets and the floor around her bed.

Joel might be stubborn, but even he can admit when he's out of his depth. After too many nights of staring at the tiny font of the "literature packet," he decides to call in someone better equipped to translate this kind of gibberish. His options are limited. Joel hasn't exactly been personable. The Fireflies in his "unit" know him as the loner who somehow weaseled his way out of PT, goes on solo scouting runs, and is constantly skirting the edge of insubordination. He knows them well enough to say hello and he doesn't think he's made any major enemies, but they won't be lining up to help him either. The rest know him only by reputation - as the immune girl's guardian and as a bit of a loose cannon. His options are slim, but he thinks he knows who might be in the best position to help him out.

His first instinct is to look for her at the gym, but she might not take kindly to him pestering her if she's there doing PT with her buddies. He decides instead to check the library, late in the evening when her older comrades are off drinking and gambling in the off-duty hours. Tucked in among dusty stacks of science textbooks, political theory, and military training manuals, there's a small fiction section featuring paperbacks and hard covers in varying states of disrepair. He finds her there, lying on her back with her booted feet kicked up on the wall, seemingly immersed in something by Steinbeck.

"Hey, Abby."

She sits up and tucks her book away at once. "Joel." Her brow furrows. He hasn't had much one-on-one interaction with her since their first meeting, though she's been coming by to visit Ellie a couple times a week. Might be her dad keeping her away, Joel thinks, especially since things have turned frosty between them. "Is everything okay? Is it Ellie?"

She thinks he's come to tell her that something's gone wrong, and Joel feels a pinch of fear that if she's worried too, then there must be something to worry _about._ He forces that down and makes himself smile. "She's fine. She's feeling a lot better today. Kept down breakfast and everything. I'm here because I was hoping you could help me with something."

She rolls to her feet - a nifty little move without using her hands that she probably learned in PT. "What is it?"

There are a handful of small tables here and there, surrounded by cracked plastic chairs repurposed from waiting rooms. Joel gestures her over to one of them. The library is mostly empty at this time of the evening, but there's no point in drawing attention to themselves. From his pack, he pulls out the damn literature packet, now much creased and dog-eared. He lets his smile turn a little self-deprecating. "Now, I'm sure this'll be a surprise, given I'm such an upstanding citizen now, but when I was your age I didn't have much use for school. Never finished and never paid much attention while I was there - way too preoccupied with raising hell and chasing tail. Now, your dad gave me this info packet on his plans for Ellie. I've gotta parse through it so I can know what to expect and be there for her. But, I can't make heads or tails of the damn thing. Wondered if maybe you could."

Her brow is furrowed with doubt, but she reaches for the packet and flips past the title page. "I'm not a scientist like my dad. It was never really my thing."

"Sure, but you had to have picked up _something_. Gotta imagine he'd rub off a bit."

"A little." She chews on her lip. "This . . . this is written like a grant proposal. Like they used to write in the old days to get funding or get permission to do a study. Dad's had me read a few of them."

"There's no one here to ask permission from," Joel points out, "Besides maybe Marlene."

She shakes her head. "Maybe he was just writing it as a record. To organize his thoughts and plan out the study."

She flips the page and scans for a moment, twiddling idly with her braid. "A lot of this is way beyond me," she says, "And the parts that I _do_ get . . . they don't make any sense."

"I know he's been dosing her with drugs. Different 'chemical therapies' every couple days, plus daily pills and other medications. She keeps getting sicker, and he keeps telling me it's all just expected side effects. I don't get half of what he's talking about most of the time."

She consults the table of contents for a moment. "They have the drug therapies listed later on." She flips a few pages forward and squints at a list of words that look like mixed-up Scrabble blocks to Joel. "I know a couple of these . . . but why would she be on prednisone? And . . . holy shit, doxorubricin? Cyclophosphamide? Nobody's used these drugs in . . . decades, probably." Her face is tightening as she studies the list. She swallows hard.

"What is it?" Joel prompts.

"It's nothing, it's . . . it's probably nothing. I've gotta be misunderstanding this. My dad's taught me a little, but I'm nowhere close to his level."

"Just give me something. Even if it's just a hunch. Please."

A hint of suspicion suddenly enters her eyes and she looks up at him. "Why are you so set on figuring this out? Why not just ask my dad if you've got questions?"

"I have. He gives me the same doctor-speak runaround every time."

"I'm sure if he knew you really didn't understand, he'd . . ."

"Trust me, he knows. But, I suspect it's easier to keep me in the dark about this kind of thing. Keeps me from pitching too much of a fuss if I don't like what I hear."

She tugs on her braid nervously. "Joel . . ."

He holds up a hand. "Now, I'm not asking you to go against him. I'd never ask that - he's your dad. But, I just need to figure out what all this means for Ellie. Because I don't understand, and _she_ doesn't either."

Her square jaw tightens with sudden determination. "Okay . . . but I have to be sure. A lot of this stuff is above my level, but I've got this . . . friend. She's one of his students, and if anyone can figure this out, she can."

"Abby . . ."

"Just give me a little time." She stands and rolls up the packet so she can stuff it in her pocket. "I've got it. Promise."

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It's two nights later and Joel is kicking back in his bunk, trying to get at least a couple hours shut-eye before he has to take first watch on the wall, when he's startled out of a near-doze by an urgent knock at the door. His first thought is that it must be Marlene or Jerry, come to tell him something's gone wrong. He springs to his feet and wrenches the door open, but on the other side there's just Abby, wearing a haunted expression. She pushes into the room and closes the door, not giving him a second to point out that it's deeply inappropriate for him to have a teenage girl in his room at this hour of the night.

"We figured it out. Sort of."

This room was equipped to sleep four in bunk beds pressed against either wall. Joel sleeps in one bed, with his extra clothes and gear on the upper bunk. The other holds his weapons. Abby shoves his shotgun aside and sits down on the bare mattress. Joel is suddenly glad that he never got out of the habit of sleeping in a shirt, jeans, and boots.

She plunges in without giving him a chance to ask why she's there. "When I was little, my dad used to teach me how to tie knots. He'd always start by having me _untie_ the finished knot. He used to say that if you can undo something, you know at least half of how it's done." She pulls the now battered sheaf of papers from the pocket of her coat. "I went through the whole protocol. With that friend I told you about. I knew those drugs sounded familiar, and there's a reason for that." She flips to the page with the various drugs listed. They've been underlined or circled, and there are scrawled notes in the margins, written in pencil. "The drug protocol that Dad put Ellie on . . . he didn't invent it. All of the drugs she's getting were used pre-outbreak, only they were used on _cancer_ patients."

Joel nods, more weary than surprised. "Yeah, I had a feeling."

She blinks. "What?"

"Her symptoms . . . they all fit with someone who's getting chemo. Used to be pretty common before the outbreak. Happened to a friend of my dau . . . to a family friend. So, I got to see some of the symptoms up close." He fixes his eyes on the girl. "What I don't understand is why."

Abby chews on her lip. " _Why_ is worse than _what._ " She looks down at the papers in her hands, but she's clearly organizing her thoughts more than she's reading. "The drug regimen - the chemo? - it was designed to fight lymphoma. That's an immune system cancer. The drugs target the bone marrow and end up suppressing her immune system. That's why her white blood cell count keeps dropping and why she keeps getting sick. But that's not the worst part. That's back in the objectives section." She flips back a few pages and points to a section that's been circled with a pen stroke so hard it almost tore through the paper. "Just read it."

Joel picks it up and reads, though he has to sound out a few of the words like a first grader. "'Objective: to investigate whether suppression of antibody-based immunity is efficacious in enabling spread of target organism within and beyond the central nervous system, thereby enabling less invasive sampling and excision methods.'" He looks at Abby and arches an eyebrow. "What the hell does this mean?"

"That he's suppressing her immune system."

"Right. He did that months ago when he took away her food. He said he was looking for little changes on blood work or brain scans that would tell him what he needed to know."

"This isn't the same thing. The therapy is going for 'full blown immunocompromise.' That's what my friend called it. You can't give chemo to someone who has an infection. Whether it's a fungal infection or bacterial or anything else. Once the drugs hit the immune system, the infection runs wild. It grows out of control. I think . . ." She hesitates, swallows, then makes her decision. "I think he was trying to take away her immunity. To make her _turn._ If you can't figure out how to tie the knot . . . you try _untying_ it."

Joel hadn't thought that anything could surprise him anymore, but at those words he feels something icy spread through his veins. He stands and paces in the small open space by the beds. It's too terrible to be true.

It makes too much sense not to be true.

"Joel?" Abby says quietly. "What now? What do we do?"

He forces his mind back to practicalities. " _We_ don't do anything," he says firmly, "You've stuck your neck out way too far for Ellie and me already. You go home, you forget this conversation ever happened, and you let me handle it."

Her jaw tightens mulishly. "She's my friend."

"He's your dad."

"But, he's _wrong!_ "

"He has his reasons, like everybody does. Don't get yourself involved in this. I know what I've gotta do, and I can't have anybody else getting involved."

"But, _Joel . . ._ "

"Girl. It's time for you to go."

She hates it, but she obeys, and that's all he needs from her.

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The night guards by Ellie's room aren't more than teenagers themselves. They're easy enough to bribe, though it costs Joel two bottles of alcohol and all of his remaining coffee. They've both seen him coming and going at all hours for months; there's no reason for them to suspect any harm in one late-night visit.

Ellie is asleep when he enters. The only light is what filters through the windows from the wall outside and the soft red glow of the pulse ox that she now wears 24/7. Joel sits beside her and touches her shoulder, gently.

She wakes with a start and he lays his hand over hers. "Hey, kiddo."

She blinks a few times. "Joel? What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

He doesn't respond immediately - just smiles and squeezes her hand.

"Joel, you're scaring the _fuck_ out of me. What is it?"

"Ellie . . ." He trails off, pauses, and tries again because this is important. "There's something I've gotta do. They probably won't let me see you for a while afterwards, or . . . they might not let me see you ever again. I need you to know that, whatever you might hear, it's not about me _wanting_ to leave you. There's something I've gotta do to keep you safe. That's all. There's no other choice, here."

"Joel, what the fuck?"

Her hair is falling into her face. He brushes it back and a few long hairs cling to his hand, long after it's left her head. "I need you to be brave for a while longer. Don't trust what they tell you an' don't . . . don't give them _permission_ to hurt you. No matter how important they say it is. No matter how good a cause it seems. You do everything that you can to stay _safe._ "

" _Joel . . ._ "

He leans down and kisses her forehead, feeling the weight of something unsaid between them - something that'll just have to be understood. "Goodbye, baby girl."

Before pain can overwhelm duty, he stands and turns toward the door. She calls after him, but he doesn't turn back.

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Anderson inspects the wall once a week. It's largely ceremonial but represents his one concession to the responsibilities of commanding the Salt Lake base - all of his other logistic and administrative duties get farmed out so he can focus on his research. The inspection is a chance to see and be seen by the Fireflies' rank and file and a chance to remind them all of their mission.

It's Joel's best chance to catch him out in public, with as many eyes around him as possible.

Joel leaves his weapons neatly arranged on the spare bunk - even his shivs and club. He's not here for a fight. He arms himself only with the research information, now tucked in a folder to protect the battered pages.

He finds Jerry by the gate, talking to the watch commander while a few dozen Fireflies stand at attention. It's only a fraction of the couple hundred that live and work in the QZ, but it's the widest audience Joel's going to get. The rumor mill is certainly up to the task of carrying his words to every corner of the facility.

He sees the moment Anderson notices Joel striding towards him. The doctor trails off mid-sentence. His brow furrows . . . then hardens. As for Joel, his own face is a mask of righteous anger. The Fireflies nearest him shy away despite themselves. "What the hell, Anderson?" he says in a tone that's controlled but meant to carry, "You want to tell these folks the truth?"

Jerry takes a half step towards him. "Joel, whatever it is, we can discuss it privately."

"No, I think we ought to discuss it right here. Everybody here is affected, after all." A couple of guards step between Joel and the doctor, rifles in hand. Joel smiles without humor. "Relax, kids. I'm not here to hit him." He turns toward the crowd, which is now shifting anxiously. He's not one for speeches, but he's always been able to do what he has to do to survive. He raises his voice. "I am here," he raises the research packet, "To talk about the lies this man has been telling you. To talk about how he's puttin' your lives - your _mission_ \- at risk just to test out his theories."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Jerry says tersely.

Joel glances at him. "I know that I brought you a completely immune person. The first one in the whole world. A breakthrough. A miracle. And you're trying to piss that away." He looks back at the crowd, which is now murmuring quietly. They fall silent when he speaks. "I'm sure you all know that people die from Dr. Anderson's experiments. A lot of them turn first. Some of you have lost friends that way - heroes to the cause that thought they were giving their lives to make somethin' better. What they didn't know - what he's kept from all of you, too - is that he's been trying to add one more casualty to the list of people who've turned." He pauses and spits Anderson with a sharp glare. "Ellie," he says flatly, "The immune girl. The only girl in the goddamn world that's immune . . . and he's trying to make her turn."

"You are _so far_ out of your depth it's almost funny . . ."

"Why don't you educate me, then? Why don't you tell us all about the immunosuppressive cocktails you put her on - the chemo drugs? What happens if you give chemo to somebody with a fungal infection? The fungus spreads. Gets out of hand. It ain't really that complicated."

"Miller, this is your last warning . . ."

"And letting it get out of hand was the whole point, wasn't it? It's right here in your notes for anybody to read. You _wanted_ the Cordyceps to spread - to take over her brain. You thought somehow if you could just _watch_ that you could figure out how it happened. Only, that's gonna kill her. She'll turn, like all the rest of your guinea pigs, and then your last chance for a cure is just gonna be so much spore-riddled meat inside a crematory oven. And you'll have lost all _hope_ of a cure."

The crowd is muttering, now. Nobody calls out in protest or support, but many faces are conflicted. Conflicted and young and scared. Jerry's face is white with rage. "I think we've heard enough of these ravings. Sergeant, take Private Miller to the brig. Charges of insubordination."

The guards hesitate, and Joel thinks, just maybe, he might have a shot.

Anderson swallows and raises his voice. "I want everyone besides essential personnel assembled in the mess hall at twelve hundred. I'll address questions and clear up any rumors. But, right now I want this man _out of my sight_."

There's conflict in their faces, but the guards who'd moved to block Joel now step forward and grab his shoulders. Joel doesn't resist as they twist his arms behind his back and secure his wrists with zip ties. Joel recognizes one of them as Private Hernandez, a woman he'd met on his very first day here. She takes the research packet from him. He lowers his voice to a whisper. "You pass that around, now, you hear?"

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback of all kinds is cherished.


	10. Terminal:  Relating to the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel is running out of options. So is Jerry.

He's hauled down to the same cell as before, searched for weapons, and left alone. It's not long before Joel catches himself wishing they'd hit him - it would pass the time and give him something to focus on besides the anxious waiting. There's nothing to do but pace the floor and no way of marking time at all, with no light but a single hanging bulb.

_"What are you doing?"_

_"Killing time."_

_"Well, what am I supposed to do?"_

_"I am sure you will figure that out . . ."_

Out there, things are happening. Jerry will be out doing damage control, trying to nudge his sheep back into the fold. Marlene will have been looped in. Will this finally be a bridge too far for even her? Someone will have checked on Ellie . . . god, she must be worried sick. He shouldn't have gone to see her. It was selfish of him.

He couldn't have done anything else.

He has to piss once and he's starting to get hungry, so he thinks it's probably evening before the door swings open. He's a touch disappointed but not really all that surprised to see Jerry not looking at all like a deposed tyrant. The doctor's face holds cold rage. He steps inside the cell and closes the door, leaving the four guards outside. Bold of him, Joel thinks idly.

Anderson's not in the mood for pleasantries. "You stupid _fuck_." His voice is almost a hiss. "You've really screwed the pooch now, you know that?"

Joel leans against the wall and folds his arms. His face is just as dark. "What's the matter, Jerry? Scared of the truth coming out?"

"You don't even know what truth _is_. We're _building_ something here and you come in with your half-baked conspiracy theories and think you can just burn it all down! You _can't_ , of course, but that's not going to stop you trying, is it?" Joel is silent. Jerry glares at him and draws a slow breath. "Yeah, your little attempt at a populist uprising isn't going anywhere. These people are loyal to me. They _trust_ me. Yeah, you planted a few doubts, but they settled down after I explained things to them."

"Explained _what?_ "

"Same thing I've been trying to tell you for months: that one girl's life can't be more important than the rest of the world's survival. Somehow, they get it." He pauses. "Yes, the experiments are risky, but I am doing everything in my power to do what needs to be done while keeping Ellie safe."

"By suppressing her immune system? By trying to get the Cordyceps to grow out of control?"

Anderson shakes his head. "You don't get it. You really don't get it."

"Then, maybe you should've explained it to me instead of shuttin' me out!"

"Shutting you out? Joel, we've rolled out the red carpet for you and you've done nothing but punish us for it! We should've left you in that overpass for the infected to find. Or, at the very least escorted your ass out of Salt Lake as soon as Marlene paid you off. But, I thought you could help support the girl. All you've done is poison her against us and put her even more at risk."

" _I'm_ putting her at risk? Oh, that's rich."

"We should've killed you a long time ago! For _everyone's_ sake."

Joel knows, by now, where he stands with the Fireflies, but the conviction in Anderson's voice still rocks him back a little. "Well," he says quietly, "Then I guess it's time you correct your mistake. Because I won't stand around and watch her die."

Anderson snorts, but his face holds no humor. "We can't. Because of Ellie."

Something about his tone makes a trickle of fear spread through Joel. "What are you talking about?"

"I went to see her after your little stunt. You must've said something to her because the first thing she asked was what you'd done. She was agitated - out of control. For a minute, we were worried the Cordyceps was spreading to her limbic system, but a scan proved otherwise." He shakes his head. "You've taught her a lot about violence. She's taken a hostage."

Joel blinks. "A hostage? What hostage?"

" _Herself._ She got hold of a knife and tried to rip her own IV port out. She said if we did _anything_ to you, she was done with us, done with the study, and she'd find a way to make sure we never got our hands on the cure. We've got this teenage girl threatening to end her own life over a piece of shit like _you_ , and, I believe that she'll do it, too. That's what your attachment - your _obsession_ \- has done to her!" He pauses for breath, panting. Joel is speechless. After a moment, Jerry laughs bitterly. "So, no, we can't kill you, Joel. At least not until we work out this particular situation."

Joel has to remind himself to breathe. He _told_ her . . . She doesn't do what she's told. Especially when people she cares about are in danger. _Fuck_ , he should have seen this coming. He never should have said goodbye. "Let me talk to her," he says quietly, "I can . . . I can talk some sense into her. Might be the only one that can."

"That's never going to happen."

"Look, she's just a scared kid! She doesn't want to lose anybody else. I can _make_ her understand."

"No, you don't get it, you are _never_ going to see her again. You've used up all your chances. We'll keep you alive, for her sake, but that's all you get, and it's more than you deserve."

"An' that's fine if you'll just stop the damn trial! It's what I expected. But, you're killing her and I can't just stand by and watch."

"I'm _trying_ to save her life!"

"By killing her slow?"

Anderson seems to reach some kind of decision. His face twists with emotion. Anger and disgust and maybe just a little bit of self-loathing. "You think you can judge me? Fine. Step into my world. Take a look at the choices _I_ have to make."

He pulls a marker from his pocket and turns to the wall. The door has been roughly framed in, with cracked dry wall. On the gray backdrop, he draws a quick, rough sketch of a brain - a half-moon of squiggled lines around a fist-sized black circle that Joel recognizes immediately as Ellie's Cordyceps growth. "As soon as I saw the brain scans, I knew what I _should_ do. What I'd do if she were a captured enemy combatant or a test subject or even one of our own people. The Cordyceps sits in the brain, and whatever mechanisms are keeping it in check, they'll be expressed in the neurons right alongside it. We need to look at those neurons, do some immunohistological stains on them, and that's the first step toward an in vitro study to figure out how the immunity works and replicate it for others. We could get enough of the Cordyceps to sequence its genome - even to grow more of it, maybe. But, we'd need to do an en bloc resection. And she was a _kid._ A little girl. I couldn't do it. I've tried every other option, killed over a dozen of my own people in the process because I just couldn't do what needed to be done."

"Jerry . . . enough, alright? Enough with the doctor-speak, enough with the hints. What are you actually saying?"

He draws two sharp lines, one on each side of the growth. "We'd need to cut into her brain. Remove the entire growth and a section of the adjoining tissue."

"Remove part of her brain."

"Yes."

Joel swallows. His head is spinning. Maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. "Could . . . could she even survive something like that?"

Some of the rage drains out of Jerry's face. He seems conflicted. "Technically . . . maybe. It's not in her hypothalamus. She'd probably still be able to breathe and swallow and regulate her heartbeat. Basic functions would be intact, but . . . the damage would be . . . severe. Both speech centers would be affected. She wouldn't be able to understand language. She'd lose most of her motor function over half her body and a lot of sensation, too. She'd be severely disabled. It . . . wouldn't be fair. To put someone through that."

"I . . . I don't understand. You just said she could survive."

"If we had to do that kind of a surgery . . . it wouldn't be ethical to _make her_ survive. It would have to be a terminal surgery."

"Meaning, what? You'd kill her after?" Joel's voice isn't even angry. He's too sick and horrified for that.

"To keep her from going through that kind of pain? Yes. She would die, painlessly, under anesthesia. It's better than what ninety-five percent of the world gets."

"But, it's not what she'd _want_! She told me before the biopsy! She said if anything went wrong, she'd want to try to go on fighting."

"It's not her decision at that point."

"The hell it ain't!"

Jerry just shakes his head, as anger creeps back into his face. "I can see you're not going to be reasonable - about any of it. It doesn't matter - we're not doing the terminal surgery, at least not yet. There's one more thing I had to try, and we're going to see it through."

Joel swallows. "The chemo."

"Yeah. Yes, it suppresses the immune system. Yes, I was hoping her Cordyceps would spread. I'm _still_ hoping. I go to bed every night praying that it'll spread to her skin or her spleen or her liver or anywhere besides her brain. Because then we could remove it. We could study the growths and the immune response to them. We could get everything we need off of that and never have to touch her brain. Yes, there are risks. If it spreads _through_ her brain instead, it could go to her limbic system and she could turn. But, I took a chance at her surviving over the certainty of her dying."

Joel stares at him for a minute. This is . . . more than he can process. More than he can take. But, there's still one thing he knows for sure. "There's one more option," he says quietly, "You can _stop._ You don't have to kill her - not accidentally and not on purpose. You can just let her go."

He shakes his head. "That's not an option at all." He pockets the marker and turns towards the door. "We'll continue with the chemotherapy for as long as her body can take it. If it works . . . we'll do everything we can to make sure she makes a full recovery. If it doesn't . . . all I can promise is that it will be painless."

Joel draws a slow breath. "You sick son of a _bitch_ . . ."

Jerry cuts him off. "And, you know? A part of me thinks that knowing this ought to be punishment enough for what you've done." He turns and glares pure fire at Joel. "But, then I remember that you used my _daughter_ against me."

Joel glares back at him, unapologetic. 

Jerry opens the door and jerks his head at the four guards outside. "Make sure to leave him alive."

As they shove him against the wall and the blows start falling, Joel's first gut response is relief. Jerry surely didn't intend this part as a mercy, but that's what it is. As long as he's shaking off hits and struggling to keep his head on straight, he only has to focus on that straightforward, familiar kind of pain. It lets him put off feeling the other pain - the one that's worse than any punch to the gut, the one he can't do anything about.

At least for a little while.

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The days pass slowly. Each hour feels like torture, but there's nothing to be done about them. Joel fights to keep a grip on his fear. At times, he has to suppress the urge to babble to himself, just to hear a voice. They feed him enough to get by. They don't beat him again, and after a couple of days he can breathe without fire spreading through his chest. That makes it harder, actually. When breaths aren't a struggle, he has more trouble keeping track of the passage of time. Every couple of days, Marlene drops by to let him know that Ellie is still alive and still a trooper about her treatments. Anderson never comes by himself. Joel gets the sense that the doctor is just _done_ with him.

It's a few hours after breakfast maybe two weeks in and Joel is leaning back against the wall, the mattress under him, trying to resist the urge to just bang his head repeatedly off of the metal. The door opens with a clang and a soft screech. 

Joel looks up, expecting Marlene, but smiles when he sees it's his only other regular visitor. He doesn't have any furniture, so she plops down on the floor across from him, legs folded Indian-style like the kid she still is. "Hey, old man."

Dr. Anderson may have written Joel off as a lost cause, but his daughter's visited four or five times. Joel wonders why her father lets her. He has to know about it. "Mornin', Abby."

"How's your face?"

The guards hadn't been as careful about leaving only concealable injuries this time. No matter. The bruises have almost completely healed - only faint green smudges remain - and the split over his eyebrow is just a flaking scab. "It's fine."

"And your hand?"

Ruefully, he looks down at the blue-black bruises over his left knuckles. He'd . . . finally cracked a little three days before. A large dent and many chips in the drywall to the side of the door stand as more permanent reminders of his outburst. For that, the guards had made him spend the night with his hands zip tied behind him. At least he'd had the sense not to use his gun hand. "It's healing. Nothing broke, I don't think."

"I could bring you some painkillers . . ."

"No, you can't, but it's a nice offer." He leans forward and props his elbows on his knees. "Why do you keep coming down here, girl?"

Abby's lip quirks. "Promised a friend."

Joel swallows. "How is she?"

"I told her about your hand. She called you . . . about twelve kinds of idiot."

Joel smiles a little. "Those her words, huh? 'Idiot.'"

"Well . . . the rest of the words I'm not going to repeat."

"Still mad at me, then."

The girl's lips press together. "She's scared for you. It's not the same thing."

Joel nods. He knows. "How _is_ she?"

"The sepsis cleared up. Her white blood cell count is back to normal. Her temperature is down and she's doing okay on the liquid diet. We finally had to shave her head. She said to tell you 'haha, can't stop me now.'"

Joel forces a smile. "I'm sure she's very proud of herself." He looks away. "And she's not . . . she's not doing anything to hurt herself?"

"She never _wanted_ to do that - she just thought she had to if she was gonna keep you alive. She believes in the study. She _wants_ it to work."

"Yeah," Joel says tiredly, "She's a little hero."

Abby nods. Her expression is torn. "Only . . ."

"Only _what_?"

The girl swallows. Kids grow up fast these days, but this is still way too much for someone her age. She keeps her composure, though. "I think she's getting tired. It's been . . . a lot of complications. A lot of side effects. She's getting weak."

Joel closes his eyes. That's not what he wants to hear, but he can't let Abby see how much it hurts. "Any . . . any light at the end of the tunnel?"

"There's been no sign of Cordyceps growth. Not on blood work, not on full body scans. I think . . . everyone's getting a little desperate. I don't know what to do."

"There's nothing _for_ you to do. You bein' there for her as a friend is more than we had any right to ask."

"Nobody will tell me what happens if the study fails. I . . . I screamed at my dad about it last night. He won't say a word. And, I think it _is_ failing. No matter what they do, the Cordyceps just doesn't respond."

"You don't need to be worrying about that."

Her face hardens. "My dad . . ."

"Is trying to protect you." He cuts her off. "Let him."

She sighs. After a moment, she looks down and pulls open her backpack. "She wanted me to give you these."

"Now, she _can't_ be giving her stuff away! We're not there, yet." He takes the books anyway and turns them over in his hands. _The Parable of the Sower. The Parable of the Talents._ "Besides, these are yours."

"It's fine. I want you to have them. We both do."

He sighs. "Abby . . . if Ellie dies, they're gonna kill me next, and, frankly, I'm gonna let 'em. It's just how these things go. Now, I appreciate everything you've done for Ellie. But, don't go gettin' attached to an old shit like me."

"She told me you'd be an ass about this kind of a thing." Abby's face holds no ire. "I grabbed a couple things from your room. She told me what to get. It's inside the second book." She stands and leaves without a word.

Joel opens the book and a few pieces of paper slide out. There's the picture of Sarah from Tommy's - the one Ellie gave him when they first made it to Salt Lake City. There's the sketch of the giraffes and another, newer sketch of what's clearly his own face, rendered in colored pencil. He runs his fingers over them, one by one, then tucks them under his mattress where they'll be safe. He's about to set the book aside, when a scrawled note on the inside cover catches his eye. The handwriting is shaky but clear enough.

_She makes it to the stars._

He closes his eyes and doesn't open them for a long time.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

It takes the better part of a day, but he eventually resigns himself to reading the books. There's nothing else to do in here, anyhow. What he finds seems way too heavy for a kid to be reading, especially on the recommendation of another kid. Joel skims through the story of a girl named Lauren and her struggle against an apocalypse of sorts. He doesn't pay too much attention to the various atrocities that befall her along the way - everybody now has their own troubles, and it takes a lot to shock him. His eyes glaze over a bit when the book gets into philosophy - and there's a lot of that. All about life and change and the futility of holding on to anything. People believe what they have to. To cope. By the time light's out is getting close, though, he's reached the last page and what he sees there stops him in his tracks.

Ellie lied. Or at least, she misrepresented the ending.

Lauren dies at the end. Her friends load her ashes into their spaceship and take her to the stars, just like she'd always wanted. Just like Ellie's always wanted.

The lights go out without warning, leaving him in pitch blackness. All the same, he doesn't sleep at all that night.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Another day passes, agonizing in its slowness, like all the ones before. Joel forces himself to eat. He's gonna stay alive for Ellie, for as long as she needs him to. He can do that much.

He's just choked down the last of his dinner when the door swings open again, and this time it's Marlene, flanked by four guards. He springs to his feet. Something in her face tells him that this is different. That this is it.

"What is it?" he asks roughly, "The sepsis again?"

"No. She's comfortable." Marlene is shaking her head. "But, this is the end of the line."

"The fuck are you talking about?"

"We've done everything. We've tried everything. Her body can't take any more chemo. It's time to move on." Marlene draws a slow breath. For all her coldness over the past few months, she's teetering. She looks like she's held together with scotch tape and barbed wire. "We're setting up the operating room. Dr. Anderson is going to do the en bloc resection. The terminal surgery."

This is the fight that Joel has been preparing for these past two weeks, but now that it's here, the pain hits a lot harder than he expected. He makes his voice hard. "She ain't sick. You have _no right_ . . ."

"We don't need your _consent_." Her voice is sharp, but not angry. She actually gives him a small smile that's full of pain. "We have hers."

"She wouldn't . . ."

"That's a fucking lie, and you know it! The fate of the world hangs in the balance. Ellie gets that, even if you never could. She's going to die, Joel. We can make it painless. And we can make it _mean_ something. It's what she wants."

"She's a kid! She's scared of lettin' people down and losing all her friends, not of _dying_. You never had any right to even _ask_ this of her . . ."

"Joel, just stop." Marlene holds up a hand. "Just put aside your own bullshit for one minute. She needs you."

"Well, _yeah,_ I'm the only one not lining up to scoop out her brain!"

"I'm saying she _needs you to support her_. She's asked to see you. But, that's only going to happen if I'm sure you're not going to make this harder on her."

"See her . . ." he says quietly, "You'd let that happen?"

"For her . . . yes _._ And I'm doing more than that. She had conditions. On her consent for the surgery. She wanted you released. You visit with her while she goes to sleep, and then you walk out of here free and clear, and you never look back. That was the deal."

"I am _not_ letting a little girl die for me!"

"You _will._ You'll do it for her. This whole time, you've been fighting to protect her . . . you're not gonna take this from her. You're not gonna make her lose you, too."

Joel considers his response for long moments. He eyes the guards. There's four of them. Heavily armed. He's got no chance.

Marlene's cheekbone cracks under his fist, but he knows it won't be enough.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will be wrapped up very soon, for better or for worse. The remaining three chapters are fairly short, and then there will be a very short epilogue to tie up loose ends. The next chapter probably could have been combined with this one, but I think it needs a little space to breathe because it's exactly as angsty and heart-wrenching as you're probably imagining.
> 
> All forms of feedback are very much appreciated.


	11. If I Ever Were to Lose You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can't have her worrying about him.

After. After Joel has argued himself blue, screamed himself hoarse, after he's taken another swing at Marlene and taken another beating for it, after all of that, Marlene still keeps her word to Ellie. They let him see her. One last time, but that part's unspoken. Marlene stops outside the familiar door. "They're prepping the OR now," she says, her voice held together with fraying twine, "We've given her a sleeping pill. It'll kick in within the hour, and then we'll induce anesthesia. You can stay with her until then. You're the only one she wanted to see."

Joel swallows. He forces all emotion down deep, so deep, like that pit he once dug in the Texas sand, shoves them down and buries them there. This is the hardest thing he's ever had to do, but he has to keep moving forward. He doesn't look at Marlene. The door swings open and he enters alone.

Ellie is curled in the bed, looking half her age, but still her face is ancient. The fluorescent lights add a goldish tinge to the red peach fuzz on her scalp. Her eyes are closed, but when he steps close, she opens them and scoots back. He tucks himself in beside her, dirt from his boots smudging the pristine sheets, and gathers her into his arms. "Hey, baby girl."

She's shaking, but she squeezes his hand tight. "Hey, jail bird." She swallows. "You heard about the surgery."

He tucks her closer to his chest. She's lost so much weight . . . "I heard you'd lost your damn mind. Came to see for myself."

Her laugh is a little shaky, but it's not weak. She sobers. Blinks a few times. "Tell Abs not to get dog ears all over my comic collection. That shit'll be worth something someday. And . . . if you ever find the last issue, can you get it to her? We both want to know how it ends."

"Ellie . . ."

"And don't . . ." she waves her hands at the whole barely-pieced-together mess of him, "You know. Like after Sarah. She wouldn't have wanted that for you. And I sure as _fuck_ don't."

"Ellie, listen to me . . ."

"No. You listen." She pulls back and rolls onto her side, facing him. Her eyes are huge in her thin face. "Joel, I want this."

He feels like there's a knife in his throat. He swallows and buries it. Deep in the Texas sand . . . He makes his face grim and serious. "Ellie, you can talk me into a lot. But, you can never convince me that you _want_ to die."

She turns onto her back, hands resting on her chest. "I want . . . I want it to end. Every day . . . every time, they take a little more of me and . . . it never _fucking_ works. It never helps. I can't keep going through that."

"I told you, baby girl. Say the word, and no more doctors. Anderson can go fuck himself. We can go find someplace safe and . . . just live."

"No." Her voice is horrifyingly steady. "This could still work. I can still make it all worth it. And if it's not . . . at least I won't be let down again."

" _Ellie . . ._ "

"It's not your decision, okay? And I don't want to fight with you anymore." She looks at him. Scared. Her voice is a plea. "Make this easy?"

Her eyes are starting to waver. That'll be the sedative kicking in. Well, he can't let her go to sleep still worrying about him. He forces everything down and nods. "Okay." Outside the door, Marlene and the four guards pretend not to watch them. "I think . . . it might be out of either one of our control now."

Her face relaxes. She even smiles a little. Her guitar sits in the corner, collecting dust. It's been weeks since she was strong enough to strum. She's staring at it. "I'm sorry I never got the hang of that thing."

"Don't be. Takes years."

"Play me something?"

"Okay." He retrieves it and settles it across his lap, staying close enough that he can feel the warmth of her body. He strums idly for a moment, then settles into the first melody that comes to his mind.

"And, you _have_ to sing. You promised."

The world goes hazy for a moment and he has to blink hard and force a smile. "I promised no such thing."

"I know . . . But, you're gonna."

"Yep. I suppose I am."

She slides her arm around him, as if to comfort him. The lyrics float through his mind, like cotton on the wind, like dandelion seeds. _If . . . I ever were to . . ._ No. He can't put that on her - not now. He lets his fingers go still for a moment, then chooses another tune - one he knows well, one that never failed to lull Sarah to sleep a lifetime ago, back when the scariest thing in his life was the family court judge. His voice is low and gruff - he never would've made it as a singer. But, he sings.

_"Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes_

_And save these questions for another day_

_I think I know what you've been asking me_

_I think you know what I've been trying to say,"_

Her eyes drift close. She's smiling, and it takes years off her face.

_"I promised I would never leave you_

_An' you should always know,_

_Wherever you may go, no matter where you are, I never will be far away,"_

Her body is relaxing - releasing tension he hadn't even noticed. Marlene told him it'd be peaceful.

_"Goodnight my angel, now it's time to sleep_

_And still so many things I want to say,_

_Remember all the songs you sang for me_

_When we went sailing on an emerald bay,"_

She wouldn't suffer. That's what Marlene said. They could keep her from ever suffering again, if . . .

_"And like a boat out on the ocean_

_I'm rocking you to sleep_

_The water's dark and deep, inside this ancient heart_

_You'll always be a part of me . . ."_

He strums and hums wordlessly until he's sure she's asleep. Her face is slack and she snores softly. She won't be able to hold this last verse against him.

He drops his voice to a whisper, too low even for Marlene's secret microphones to pick up. She never struck him as a Billy Joel fan, anyway.

_"Goodnight my angel, now it's time to dream_

_And dream how wonderful your life will be._

_Someday your child may cry, and if you sing this lullaby_

_Then in your heart there will always be a part of me."_

He draws a ragged breath. His fingers are hurting from the strings and the sand and gravel of a shallow grave outside Austin and he knows what he has to do.

_"Someday we'll all be gone, but lullabies go on and on_

_They never die_

_That's how you and I will be . . ."_

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He doesn't react to the wetness on Marlene's cheeks. It's obscene. His own face is dry. He doesn't hear whatever words of comfort she tries to tell him, just stares flatly into the distance until she lets him go. She believes in his brokenness, after everything. She gives him his pack, with all his weapons, and an escort to the front door.

As he makes the long trek down the halls and out to the gate, it's clear that word of what's happening has spread like spores through the hospital. Everywhere he goes, voices hush. People - from the grunts who've roughed him up to the teenage kids to the self-styled Colonels and Generals - all of them rise to their feet as he passes and touch their caps or their foreheads in silent, makeshift salute. He doesn't look at any of them, just keeps moving forward until the gate rolls shut behind him and he can disappear down an anonymous alley.

When he's alone - really alone - his face slackens, like Ellie's had in sleep. Tension and emotion slip away. They don't matter anymore.

Endure and survive.

He mechanically straps his revolver into its holster and tucks the 9mm into the back of his trousers. Extra ammo goes in the side pockets, where it's easy to get to. Strings his bow for the first time in weeks and slides it over his shoulder along with his 12 gauge.

There's a half-empty bottle of moonshine tucked in the bag. Marlene's work, he's sure. She must've figured he'd want to drown his sorrows.

He rips a piece of a rag into a wick and stuffs it in the neck of the bottle. His sorrows can take care of themselves.

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deepest apologies to all of you, but I think the trauma of this chapter needs a little time to settle before the trauma of the next chapter.
> 
> Joel's song here is "Lullaby" by Billy Joel. The one he starts strumming but then stops is, of course, "Future Days."


	12. Daughters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of two little girls and the fate of the world.

The east wing of the hospital burns like a candle. A couple of well placed bombs by the oxygen tanks will do that. Most of the Fireflies are evacuating or congregated over there trying to fight the flames. Only the Special Forces are still looking for Joel, but there are a lot of those.

He staggers up the final flight of stairs and takes shelter behind the heavy desk at the nursing station. His thigh bleeds sluggishly - victim of Private Hernandez's switch blade. She'd fought like hell, for a woman with a shotgun hole in her belly. He presses a rag against it and wraps it tight with duct tape. No point in looking back now.

Through the windows, he can see the operating room at the far end of the hall, opposite the clean room that was Ellie's prison for so long. It glows with harsh, artificial light. Good. He was worried they'd have moved her when the other side of the building went up five minutes ago. The long hallway leading there is brightly lit and staged as a kill box with countless sandbags and crates giving the Fireflies cover. But, they'd neglected to pay the same attention to fortifying the long row of offices and exam rooms adjoining that hallway, and the broken windows between them give him plenty of room to work. There's no time for thought as he skitters from one cover point to the next, picking off soldiers with his arrows or luring them to blast at close range with his shotgun or slipping behind them to drive a shiv into their throats. He trusts his instincts and a lifetime of unfortunate experience and, save for a few bullet grazes and bruising hits from a lead pipe, it's mostly enough. Sooner than he expected, the last guard is falling to his shiv with a whimper, and all that's left is the swinging metal door of the operating room. He reloads his revolver, gathers himself, and shoves through, praying he'll be in time.

He's in time. Barely. Anderson and two nurses are already gowned and gloved and focused on spreading out a table of gleaming surgical instruments. And Ellie . . . she sits upright in a steel chair that reminds Joel strongly of the electric chair. Even the peach fuzz has been shaved from her head, leaving her scalp smooth and gleaming, threaded through with blue veins. A series of metal rods extend from her head to lock it to a steel ring like a halo. The rods go right through the skin. One of them bleeds sluggishly. A breathing tube sticks out the side of her mouth, connected to a respirator that hisses and whirs. But, she's alive.

Jerry spins when he hears the door and freezes when he sees Joel. "All that chaos outside . . . I was afraid it was you."

Joel wets his lips and keeps his voice steady. "Back away from her."

Anderson stands his ground. "Anybody dead out there?"

Joel advances a step and cocks the hammer on the revolver. "Fewer than there will be unless you back away from that table right now." He keeps his voice icy. This part has always been easy. There's no room for emotion in survival.

Jerry waves for the nurses to step back. He raises his own hands, but keeps his voice calm. "Think about what you're doing, Joel. This is what she wants. She told you so herself."

"She told me she wanted this to _end._ Same thing I've been wanting for weeks. But, it was never enough for you, was it?"

"Joel . . . we won't get another chance at this. This could be what saves all of us."

"How many times have you said that? How many times have you _believed_ it? Just one more test, one more trial, one more dead subject and all the rest of 'em will be worth it, right? I think you've been sayin' that since long before Ellie." Anderson opens his mouth to reply, but Joel snaps a warning shot over his left shoulder, silencing him. "Now, I didn't come here to debate. I came for the girl."

Keeping his eyes on Anderson and the other two, he steps close to the table and fumbles with one hand, trying to find the connection that would release the breathing tube.

"You do that, you'll kill her!" Jerry's voice is suddenly frantic. Joel lifts his head and arches an eyebrow. The doctor draws a quick breath and goes on. "Pull that tube out the wrong way and you could rip her throat apart. That halo? It's anchored into her skull, and you don't know how to release it. But, none of that matters because if you take her off that machine, she'll die. The anesthesia has already kicked in. She can't breathe on her own."

Joel's breath comes quick and sharp. "Then, you're gonna fix it."

Jerry shakes his head, though his face is sheet white. "No. I know you don't like it, but this _has_ to happen."

With his free hand, Joel swings the steel pipe down from his shoulder. "I got ways of making you. You won't enjoy them, and neither will they." He gestures at the two women pressed against the wall, shaking in their scrubs.

Anderson's face is grim. Resolute. He's going to make Joel do it the hard way and Joel's stomach is already sinking when a distant voice changes everything.

"Dad? _Dad!"_

Next comes the horrified scream of a teenage girl who just stumbled upon a hallway stocked with dead bodies, then the light thud of a single pair of running feet down the corridor. Joel locks eyes with Jerry. In that moment, they both know what's coming next. They're both fathers. Joel has just a moment to think _God, no, anything but this._ But he doesn't get to choose his battles, or how he survives them.

Jerry drops his hands and shakes his head in wordless plea, but Joel is already moving back, sliding into concealment beside the door.

When Abby bursts into the operating room, the pipe clangs down hard on her forearms, knocking the machine gun she's carrying to the ground. She screams and turns to fight, but before she can get her bearings, Joel is behind her with his arm locked around her throat. She screams again, and kicks, and struggles, but her teenage muscles are no match for his bulk. She claws desperately at his face, scratching at his eyes, so he tightens his arm against her carotid until she starts to go weak and woozy. He releases the pressure as soon as she starts to relax and speaks, his voice low and steady. "Easy, girl. I'm not gonna hurt you. Least not as long as your dad does as he's told."

She recognizes his voice and stiffens. Her eyes finally take in the bright operating room, her father back against the wall, Ellie strapped to the chair in that nightmarish contraption. "Oh, god," she pants, "Oh, god . . ." Her head thuds against Joel's collarbone as she looks up at her father. "I'm sorry!" she cries, "They wouldn't tell me what was going on, they told me not to come, but the building was on fire and I had to get you out, I'm . . . sorry!"

Jerry is gasping for breath, but he tries to steady his voice for his daughter. "It's okay, baby girl." 

"What . . . what is this? Dad, what did you _do_?"

"Don't worry about that now." His eyes find Joel's. "Don't do this. She's just a kid."

"Yeah," Joel says flatly, "She is." Before he can second-guess himself, he shoves the revolver against her cheekbone. "She's a little girl. An innocent. But, what's one little girl against the fate of the whole world, right? That's what you said." He digs the gun harder into her face, drawing a cry from her. "Prove it."

Joel sees the moment when he breaks. Abby sees it too, and she fights and kicks. Joel tightens his grip, hurrying to subdue her before her struggles can cause an accidental shot. "Dad, no! He'll kill you!" She gasps past the pressure on her throat.

"Get her off that machine," Joel tells Jerry steadily, "Safely. And your girl gets to walk away."

The doctor's hands are shaking. He nods and reaches slowly behind him to lift a plastic vial and syringe. He draws a small dose, steps forward, and slides the needle into Ellie's IV. Joel's breath catches. "Anderson, if you cross me, I will not _hesitate._ "

Jerry holds out his hands, placating. "This will restart her breathing. That's all. I swear."

Joel nods and tries to keep his heart from thudding right out of his chest as Anderson depresses the plunger, injecting the medication. For a moment, nothing happens. Then, the EKG starts beating a little faster. Anderson is unscrewing the halo, one cruel rod at a time. When the last one releases, he lowers Ellie's head gently to the back of the chair. Her chest stutters once . . . then twice, fighting the ventilator, making the machines beep in alarm. Ignoring the breathing tube for the moment, Jerry tugs the EKG leads off her chest and Joel has to stop himself from reacting when the monitor rings out the dull tone of a flat line. Joel's arm shifts a little, from wrapping across Abby's throat to squeezing her shoulder. With slow but steady hands, Jerry pulls back on a syringe and then pulls the tube out of Ellie's throat, shining with saliva and foam. She grunts a little and takes a few short breaths. For good measure, the doctor detaches her IV and rubs a little alcohol over the injection site. He looks up at Joel and nods, defeated.

Abby pants. "Not like this, not like this . . ."

Joel gestures to one of the nurses. "You. Over here." She obeys, her hands held at shoulder height, her whole body trembling. When she's a few feet away, Joel shoves Abby at her, hard enough to topple both of them to the ground. Abby comes up with tears streaming down her face.

"No . . . not like this, not for me . . ."

Joel's eyes are locked on Jerry's. They both know what's coming. They're fathers. "Don't be too hard on your dad," Joel tells Abby, "He's only doing what any father would. Now, look away, girl." Jerry's mouth moves once, in a plea.

A single gunshot catches him right in the eye and drops him. He's dead before he hits the ground. Abby screams, but Joel barely notices because he's busy gathering Ellie's limp form into his arms.

"You monster! You fucking monster!" The other girl hits him from the side, and Joel reacts instinctively with a shove that knocks her to the ground. The nurses hurry to grab her, but she's trying to shake off their hold. "We trusted you! _I_ trusted you! And you fucking do this!" She shakes off the women's hold and charges him. Joel's half unbalanced by Ellie's weight, but he manages to sweep her leg, dumping her to the floor again. His revolver swings into line with her face and she glares up and spits at him. "Just kill me then. Just go ahead and shoot me because if you don't, I will _fucking kill you!"_

Joel can only stare down at the wreck he's made of her life. He holsters his pistol, pulls his girl close to his chest, and pushes out the door. He doesn't look back.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

The hotwired pickup rattles and rumbles over the broken highway. Joel keeps checking his rearview. He's past the suburbs and miles away from the hospital - if they haven't sent pursuit yet, they probably won't. All the same, he can't stop checking.

Beside him, in a seat reclined as far as it will go, Ellie sleeps on. Her wrist rests between them, palm up, so that he can check her pulse every couple minutes. It's strong, and her color's okay. She almost woke up a quarter of an hour ago, but eventually lapsed back into sleep, mumbling about being late for military drills.

She starts to stir again, and Joel thinks it might be the real deal this time. Her eyes open. She rolls towards him, blinks a few times, and smiles softly. Her smile freezes, though, when she sees him looking back at her. Her brow furrows and her arms, still loose and heavy with sleep, come up to clutch at her head. She seems surprised by the smear of blood from the still oozing holes in her scalp. Pain catches up with her slowly, drawing a muffled groan. "Wha' happened?"

"You're okay, baby girl," Joel says as steadily as he can, "You're just gonna need some time to get your strength back."

She sits up, hunched over with an arm around her belly. "The surgery . . ." Her face clears and she looks up at him again. "Joel. This had better be some kind of fucked up anesthesia dream."

He swallows but says nothing. Horror is dawning on her face as she takes in the state of him - the bruises, the grazes, the clothes spattered with blood that's not his. "What did you do?" she whispers, "Joel, what did you do?"

His fingers tighten on the steering wheel. "What I had to."

"No," she breathes. " _No!_ " A yell. With a wordless cry, she throws herself at him, yanking and tearing at his arms. She's smaller than Abby, but no less fierce, and after a moment, he has to brake to a stop to keep her from wrecking the truck. As soon as they're not moving, she yanks the seatbelt off and throws herself out the door. She stumbles and skins her knee, but before Joel can extricate himself from the driver's seat, she's up and moving in an unsteady run until, after a few seconds that take about a year off Joel's life, she fetches up against a rusted metal guardrail. 

Joel approaches, trying to give her space while still staying close enough to help if she were to collapse. Her hands grip the metal, hard. She's bent over and shaking like a leaf. "We have to go back."

Joel sighs. "We can't."

"We _have to!_ "

"Ellie, they will shoot us on sight."

"I'll . . . I'll go back on my own, then. I'll explain it to them. Just . . . I have to go. I have to finish it."

"It's done. It's over. Like it or not, girl, we're goin' home."

"I can _fix this!_ But, only if I go back."

"Wouldn't make no difference." She turns and stares at him, her face white. He can't conceal this forever, not unless he wants her sneaking out in the middle of the night and driving back herself. "Anderson's dead. He . . . he never would've stopped. So, I stopped him."

Breath leaves her in a huff. "Oh, god." She sinks to the ground, hospital gown fanning out around her. Joel moves to steady her, but she flings her hands out. "Don't touch me! Don't you _fucking_ touch me!" He backs away, but stays in a crouch, watching her. "He . . . he was going to save the world."

"He certainly thought so."

" _Why,_ Joel? I told you what I wanted. I thought you understood. How could you _fucking_ do this to me?!"

"You weren't in any condition to be making that kind of decision."

"And why should that fucking matter? Everybody we've known who's . . . died or gotten infected . . . I could've stopped all that. And, I didn't. How the hell am I supposed to keep going, knowing that? Knowing that I _didn't_?!!"

Joel draws a slow breath. "By understanding," he says firmly, "That those deaths are not on you. It's not your fault, Ellie. God as my witness, it's _not._ " He moves a little closer - just near enough that he can lay a tentative hand on her elbow. "Baby girl . . . Did you really want to die? Or did you just think that you should?"

She looks up at him, her face empty, her eyes lost. Slowly, she shakes her head. She opens her mouth, but whatever she was going to say dies in her throat. Before Joel can even contemplate what to say next, she's throwing herself at him and burying her face in his chest. His arms wrap around her as her hands fist in his shirt and her first tears mix with the dried blood there. Joel just sits and holds her for a long time, rubbing up and down her spine while the sobs hit her. At length, her tears dry up. When she finally speaks again, her voice is rough, but less pained than it had been. "I wanted to fix it all. I . . . I tried. I tried really hard."

Joel pulls her closer and buries his face in her shoulder. "I know, kiddo. I know you did."

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one short chapter and an epilogue will wrap this up. Now, if you'll all excuse me, I need to go hug poor Baby Abby.


	13. But One Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel have started to heal. For Abby, it's not that simple.

Joel grunts and staggers under the weight of the damn futon. On the other end of it, Tommy trips and they both almost crash to the ground. "Ellie!" Joel barks, "Get that door, will you?"

The door to the shed swings open, with Ellie behind it. She's gained back most of the weight she lost. Her hair is less a pixie than a bowl cut, but it doesn't seem to bother her. "What took you two so long?"

"Oh, very funny," Joel grunts, "Where do you want this thing, anyway?"

"Over here, but let me finish hanging the lights first."

Joel sets the futon down inside the door and looks around. It's a decent size for a first apartment, though why a fifteen-year-old _needs_ her own place, he really doesn't know. One wall is cluttered with boxes, while there's a desk against another wall and a bed frame tucked off to the side. Getting this far took an annoying amount of effort, given that the "move" covers about thirty feet. Ellie trots back over to the wall she indicated and hops up on a rickety wooden crate to hang a set of Christmas lights. Joel clears his throat. "Be careful! You know you've still had some balance problems."

Without turning, she stands on one foot and strings the lights with one hand while cheerfully flipping him off with the other. He rolls his eyes. "Suit yourself, then." While Tommy goes back for yet another box, Joel starts to unpack some of the ones they've already hauled down. "Do you want books on this shelf?"

She glances over. "No, that's the kitchen."

"The _kitchen_?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna get a hot plate."

" _You're_ gonna start cooking?"

"What? I can cook."

"Remember that time you tried to add canned prunes to a pot of chili?"

"Oh, like people can't grow and change?"

He grumbles and piles the books onto a small table instead. "Just don't burn this place down, okay?"

"Roger that."

He lays a plank over a couple of concrete blocks as a makeshift shelf, but makes a mental note to scrounge up a real bookcase. "I still don't understand why you're in such a damn hurry to move out."

"It's literally your backyard, Joel. It's not like I'm moving to Timbuktu."

"Jus' . . . Let me know, okay? If it's too much to keep up, you can always move back home."

"I can handle it."

Tommy totters through the door before Joel can work out a response to that. The man's carrying two boxes and a stacked-high laundry basket, but he manages not to tip over. "I think that's the last of it. Nothing left but the mattress. If you can give me a hand, Joel . . ."

Joel nods. "Don't die before we get back," he warns Ellie.

"I make no promises!"

Shaking his head, Joel follows after his brother. 

Once Ellie is out of earshot, Joel speaks in a low voice. "You hear back from your contacts?"

Tommy props the door for him and Joel follows him into the kitchen. "Yeah. Went down without a hitch. They left both pendants and the letter well inside Firefly territory in Laredo. Plus that note saying you were gonna keep going south and warning Marlene not to come after you."

Joel grunts. "You think that'll be enough?"

"If she really decides to find you? No. But, it could buy you years if she looks south first."

Joel nods. "And you're sure she's got no way to track us back to Jackson? You never mentioned it to her, you never said anything to any of your old war buddies?"

"Don't know how I could've unless I turned into fucking Nostradamus. I didn't meet Maria until I was well and done with the Fireflies. Haven't spoken with 'em since." He pauses. "You mind telling me what was in that other letter?"

"I do mind."

They turn the corner into Ellie's bedroom, now bare except for the mattress leaning against one wall. Joel feels a pang of loss, which is just silly. She's only been sleeping here for three months or so.

"If she comes after her . . . we'll have to run. Can't take on the whole Firefly organization."

"There's no reason you'd have to worry about that right now."

"But, if she does . . ."

"Joel. You got her to safety. She's whole and she's well and she's gettin' stronger and more ornery all the time. You don't have to fret over her every second of every day."

Joel snorts. In a lot of ways, his brother is still very naive. He stares out the window. He can see the shed from here. He'll be able to watch over her. And there's no point in agonizing over what he had to do to get her here or grieving about the damage done along the way. That's past. He can't change it, and he wouldn't if he could. He just has to move on, like he's always told her.

"Joel. You really can stop worrying."

"No, I can't. That's part of bein' a father."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

_Three months prior_

Abby has screamed herself out. Mia and Nancy tried to comfort her at first, but she shook off their hands, eventually curling into herself against the wall, as far from Dad as she can get.

She's focusing on her knees, and her breathing, which is coming harsh and sharp, when the door slams open again. She doesn't raise her head at first, but she hears the tread of one set of boots, and a woman's pained sigh.

"Report."

That voice is exhausted, but hard. There's no mistaking Marlene.

Off to Abby's right, Mia starts to rise, starts to speak, but a hand cuts her off. "I wasn't asking you, Nurse Caldwell."

A figure squats before Abby - just a dark silhouette against the fluorescent of the operating theater. She squeezes her eyes tighter and buries them in her arms, but there's no blocking out that voice.

"Private Anderson. Report."

She shakes her head wordlessly.

"Private Anderson! What happened here?"

Abby swallows. She's not getting out of this. "He . . . he was already here when I got here."

"Who?"

"I . . . I didn't know what was going on - just that my dad was here and I had to get him out. The building was on fire. But . . . he got here ahead of me."

" _Who,_ Anderson?"

She lifts her head and tries to fight down her pain. "The smuggler. Miller. He said he wasn't leaving without Ell . . . without the immune girl."

Marlene glances at the operating theater and sighs. "How'd he take her? How'd he even get her off the respirator?"

Abby squeezes her eyes shut. She can't . . . she can't think of anything that's happened here in terms of people that she loves. A girl who was her friend. A man that she trusted. Her father, who chose her over life itself. She forces herself to see them as silhouettes - shadows of themselves, meaningless. Joel Miller, a smuggler from Boston. Ellie, the immune child.

Dr. Jerry Anderson.

" _Abby._ "

"It was my dad." The words come out in a rush. "And it was _me._ It was my fault. Miller . . . he caught me off-guard when I came to get my father. He took me hostage. Told . . . told Dr. Anderson he'd shoot me unless he took the girl off the machines."

She swallows hard. "So, he did. And Joel . . . he shot him. He had what he wanted, but he still shot him for no reason, and . . ."

"Abby. Get a hold of yourself." Marlene pauses and lays a hand on her shoulder. "So, he killed Dr. Anderson. What are you going to do about it?"

Abby glares up at her. "What _the fuck_ do you think?! I'm gonna track him down, and I'm gonna kill him."

A dark hand flashes out and catches her square across the cheek, snapping her head around. "That's a _child's_ answer," Marlene snaps with strained emotion in her voice, "What, you're gonna go on some epic revenge quest? And what the _fuck_ is that going to accomplish?" She pauses. Softens a little. "Your father was a great man. And a _good_ man. But this world doesn't need good people as much as it needs good soldiers. Are you ready to be that, Abby?"

Abby swallows. She forces her pain down deep. Buries it. Stamps it down as hard as she can. She looks up at Marlene with cold murder in her eyes. "I'll be whatever you need me to be."

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to everyone who's been on this ride with me. Whether this went the way you wanted it to or not, your support and encouragement has meant the world and I hope you've gotten something of value out of it. The epilogue will be up tomorrow but will leave some questions unanswered and much room for interpretation, just as the games did. I haven't ruled out a sequel in the future since the characters still have a lot of room to learn and grow, but I think I have other stories to tell first.
> 
> As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.


	14. Epilogue:  Always

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Reconstructed from a letter, torn into twenty pieces and thrown in a trash can in Salt Lake City)

_Abby,_

_I guess if this letter's reached you and you haven't thrown it straight in the nearest fire, then that's more than I've got any right to expect. I know I can't make this better, but I didn't want to leave things the way I left them._

_Dunno if you still care, but Ellie is gonna be okay. She was sick for a few weeks, but she's getting stronger all the time. She misses you. I told her about your dad, but I didn't tell her everything. She's still mad as hell at me. I know I deserve that._

_You didn't deserve what happened to you. I wish I could say I regret it all, but you also don't need to listen to lies from me. Yes, I chose my family over yours. I wish there'd been another way, but there wasn't. Most of all, I wish I could've left you out of it. None of what happened was your fault. I'm sure you've heard that from a lot of people by now, but maybe it'll hit different coming from someone who knows about fault: Nothing you did could've changed things._

_I also want you to know that your dad was a good man. I'm not, but I never wanted to hurt him. This wasn't some kind of revenge for him locking me up or even for what Ellie went through. He had his reasons for all of it, and I understood them. Thing is, I also knew he was never gonna stop. Ellie never would've been safe unless I ended it._

_Understand, it wasn't about saving the world for your father - it was always about saving you. He just wanted you to have a better world to grow up in. And that's okay. That's human nature. I meant the last thing I said to you: don't be mad at him. Not for working for the cure and not for giving it up in the end. He just loved you. Wasn't nothing else he could've done._

_You're gonna have some things to figure out. I'm sure you've already grown up way faster than you should've had to. Stick with Marlene for a while and she'll look out for you. Eventually, though, you're gonna have to stand on your own two feet. When you do, you might decide to come after me and Ellie. I'll understand if you do, but I hope you won't. There's a lot better things to do with your life than poke at your wounds. And I know I don't want to have to go up against you. I can't do that again._

_Please take care of yourself - for your dad's sake if not for mine._

_Sooner or later, everybody finds a reason to keep fighting. I hope you find yours soon._

_always,_

_Joel_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I leave them, at least for now. 
> 
> As always, any feedback is treasured.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews and concrit are very much appreciated.


End file.
